Eight Years Ago Poem by Harun Al Nasif

Thus broke the news:
He was carted to the corpse dissection room;
Last night—in the dark of early spring night
When sank down the crescent moon—
He did feel like taking his life.

His wife lay beside him—the child as well—
There abode hopes and affections—in the moonlight—
Yet what nightmare he had? That his sleep was gone?
Or he had no sleep for ages—now sleeps
in the corpse dissection room.

Is this sleep he wished for!
Like a plague-ridden rat, mouth smudged with blood and froth
Now having slumber in the nook of darkness;
And never wilt he wake up again.

Whilst the moon was sunk and away—in a weird dark
certain silence as like as a camel’s neck
seemed to have appeared his window and told him:
‘Never shalt thou awaken again,
nor thou shalt suffer
the inexorable burdensome agony
of being any longer’—

Yet the owl stays awake;
The decaying frail frog begs some moments more
to witness another morn—in the lap of fervid passion;

In the all-embracing murky wilderness of night
the mosquito-net is ever-vigilant with all its defiance;

Yet the mosquitoes keep buzzing in their dark sanctum
to pursue their love for the stream of life.
Off the filthy garbage, flies make their way back to the sunny patches;
And the flying bugs revel in the auriferous sun-rays.

As though a fond sky—some fulgent life
held sway over their minds;
The dragonfly squirms frenetically in the nip of a playful child to escape the death.

Yet when the moon sank down, in the prime of dark
You went up to the aswattha tree with a rope, all alone
Enlightened that human beings are not destined to meet the life of a dragonfly or a magpie.

The aswattha-branch protested not?
Not the glow-worms swarmed in and joined the pleasant golden flowers?
The fragile blind owl came not and said:
‘Poor old moon seems to have flown down the stream!
Well-done!
Let me feast on some rats now! ’
Not the owl came and broke this top secret?

Savour of life—the odour of ripe corn in winter afternoon- seemed unbearable to you; —
art thou at peace in the morgue now?
At the morgue—in its sultry confines
like a battered rat with blood-stained mouth!

Yet,
Listen to the tale of this deceased; —
Not that he fell out of his affair with any woman,
Of marital bliss
nothing let he go amiss,
His wife ahead of time let him relish in
the essence and essence of being;
Never was he exposed to
the appalling hunger or tormenting cold;
So
Now in the morgue
he lies supine on the table.

know—I do know
woman’s heart—love—progeny—home—don’t mean everything
neither money, nor feat, not ease
rather some other abysmal anguish
turmoils in the veins of our blood;
It leaves us weary,
and keeps on languishing us;
In the corpse dissection room that ennui exist not.
so,
in the corpse dissection room
Supine he lies on the table.

Yeah! yet every night I behold the old owl alights on the aswattha bough and mocks:
‘Poor old moon seems to have flown down the stream!
Well-done!
Let me feast on some rats now! ’

O beloved Granny, well-done even now?
Once I’ll also grow old like you—
and at the Kalidaha will sent the old moon down the tide;
Then two of us together
leave the bounteous treasures of life void and bare.

Originial in Bangla by Jibanananda Das
translated by Harun Al Nasif