The Baya’s Nest Poem by Kushal Dutta

1.
The mist bathes your unencumbered body

The mist of my eyes
***

2.
Before the fruits ripen and fall
The field is green for all

The rest is memories of the green
Of light and shade
***

3.
At your roof you put a pot
To catch moonlight and star-flowers

In the sleepless night
Your cold tears rain down the pot
***

4.
How do I enter your room
Without so much as your leave

However do I start a song
Without a little sorrow in my lips

If I do not have a heart like yours
However do I enter your heart
***

5.
Through the lonely night-bus window
running along with me distantly
There is the dew drenched moon

Because love is not just for oneself
I remember you constantly
In this damp dusty night.
***

6.
With undeviating wish
You flung open the door
And my wishes followed in its wake

We are climbing the hill
With the eagerness of dreams
you said

After a while suddenly I woke
you again held my hand smiling
and said
We are moving ahead
With the eagerness of wishes
Taller than even dreams
***

7.
Whatever you think is a dream
is really a dream

Without even your thinking
it’s a moment’s fantasy
in your consciousness
***

8.
When eyes don’t look
the lids close
so much formality
to call you
just this once
***

9.
When we are face to face again
however would I address you

Lonely as the way to the temple
a resounding long intimate path
and since we lost the way
we are strangers

If I have to trudge down
the road of memory again
however would I face you
***

10.
Because the current always changes
the river is always a river

Because you have not remained you
for me it’s only memories now

While changing always like the river
had you but remained you always
***

11.
At the hour of the meadowy trudge back home
down the bridle path of dusk
a pair of swans circle overhead all the way

Through the paddy stalks by the lake
down the forlorn path of the gamble grove
holding hands with early moonlight
the tales of dusk flit about like crickets

The heaving sheaves at the carrying pole
of umpteen varieties of paddy
light up the bridle path
and fill the air with echoes
***

12.
This importunate moment
Enlivened by the lost tune

Beyond the melody
Is entirely for you

Your songs are for you
For me only the willed remembrance
***

13.
Dawn at the end of night like rain at the end of thirst
whatever is gold-hued by the sun is a heavenly flower

With growing thirst the meadowy damsels have come of age
With colours on the flower’s cheeks the fruit ripens golden

Golden fruit’s a host of golden waves from mid sea
Where burns the crest of our desire
***

14.
The clay doll had no life
That’s why running after crickets was my hobby

Once having lost the way in the woods
Thorns mauled and tore my heart
Forbidding my flitting about like crickets

Slowly I fell in love with the clay doll
What quietly glowing beauty is yours
***
(Translated from Assamese by Prof. Pradip Acharya)