Narrator Poem by Joy Goswami

Narrator



Ash moves in the room, printed in darkness
Paper, book, cover, painting, the call of dead birds---
Ashes moving in the room, what is suppressed in the room
One trunk of stories wants to rise up from the floor

You have nothing to do:
you are the narrator
because once you took part in that story.
By pressing your own throat you strangled many times the shout of delight
You restrained the shout of delight when death was near.....

Are you dead? Or not?
Death appears, comes near, nearer, then disappears
This heart-breaking stress of pleasure, peculiar and unknown to you
Such a whip you have never felt before

What happened at last? After a torturous wait for her and your death-sucking lip
Overflowed the limit and the sky broke open.
Out rolled the storm of the destroyed
The storm of distress rolling onto the floor

But you are still restless, where, there is no peace, none---
Fire does not descend, fire does not bow his head!
Where do you throw the flames, where should you,
With that thought the cloud bangs his head, sky! sky!

Where is the tree? Who can take the flames?
You have burnt tree after tree after tree,
With that test, in the burned out darkness
Ash moves in the room, paper, book, painting....

Cover upon book--- inside the call of dead birds
Lightning flies, says, ‘will you be my dream tree?’
Oh? Again? The floor of the room cracks---
Void---

One trunk of fiction emerging from the void, poet!


[Translated from 'Kahinikar' (Bengali) by Poet himself]

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Joy Goswami

Joy Goswami

Kolkata / India
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