Khanaa's Song Poem by Mallika Sengupta

Listen o listen:
Hark this tale of Khanaa
In Bengal in the Middle Ages
Lived a woman Khanaa, I sing her life
The first Bengali woman poet

Her tongue they severed with a knife
Her speechless voice, ‘Khanar Bachan'
Still resonates in the hills and skies
Only the poet by the name of Khanaa
Bleeding she dies.


[Translated by Amitabha Mukherjee]

Not: Khanaa (Bengali: ???) was an Indian poetess and legendary astrologist, who composed in medieval Bengali between the ninth and 12th centuries AD.