Jibanananda... Kabita Samagra

Jibanananda Das

Banalata Sen Long I have been a wanderer of this world, Many a night, My route lay across the sea of Ceylon somewhat winding to The seas of Malaya. I was in the dim world of Bimbisar and Asok, and further off In the mistiness of Vidarbha. At moments when life was too much a sea of sounds, I had Banalata Sen of Natore and her wisdom. I remember her hair dark as night at Vidisha, Her face an image of Sravasti as the pilot, Undone in the blue milieu of the sea, Never twice saw the earth of grass before him, I have seen her, Banalata Sen of Natore. When day is done, no fall somewhere but of dews Dips into the dusk; the smell of the sun is gone off the Kestrel's wings. Light is your wit now, Fanning fireflies that pitch the wide things around. For Banalata Sen of Natore. Translation: The Poet

A DAY EIGHT YEARS AGO It was heard They took him to the morgue. Last night in the February dark When the crescent moon, five days toward full, had set He'd had the urge to die. A wife had lain beside him-a child, too. There had been love, hope, in the moonlight. Then what ghost did he see? why was his sleep disturbed? Or maybe he hadn't slept for days. Now, Iying in the morgue, he sleeps. He had sought this sleep perhaps. Like a plague rat, maw smeared with frothy blood, neck slack In the bosom of some dingy cranny, now he sleeps. Never again will he wake. "Never again will you wake Never again will you know The unremitting, unrelenting grievous Pain of waking." As though some stillness stretched its camel's neck Through his window And said these words to him When the moon had sunk into strange darkness. But the owl is awake, And the decrepit, putrefying frog begs a few moments more Among anticipated warm affections-beckoned by another dawn. I sense all around me the unforgiving opposition of my mosquito net, invisible in the swarming dark. The mosquito stays awake in his blackened monastery, in love with life's flow. Flies alight on blood and filth, then fly again to sunlight. How many times have I watched the play of winged insects on waves of golden sunshine. An intimate sky it would seem-some pervasive life force Controls their hearts. The grasshopper's constant twitching, caught in the mischievous child's grasp, Fights death. Yet in that foremost darkness after moonset, you, a coil of rope in hand, Had gone alone to the aswattha tree, Knowing that the grasshopper's life, or the doyel bird's, never meets with That of man.

The aswattha limb, Did it not protest? Did not fireflies in cordial throngs Appear before you? Did not the blind and palsied owl come and Say to you: "old lady moon has sunk in the flood, has she? Marvelous! Let's now catch a mouse or two!" Did not the owl screech out that raucous news? This taste of life-the scent of ripe grain in an autumn afternoonYou could not tolerate. In the morgue, is your heart at ease In the morgue, in that suffocating stillness Like a flattened rat with blood-smeared lips. Listen, However, to this dead man's tale. He lacked Not love of woman, Nor did married life's expectations Go unfulfilled. From time's churnings emerged a wife And honey, the mind's honey She let him know. Never in this life did he shiver In the cold of hunger's draining pain. And so, In that morgue, Flat out he lies upon a table. I know, yet I know, A woman's heart-love-a child-a home-these are not everything, Not wealth nor fame nor creature comfortsThere is some other perilous wonder That frolics In our very blood. It exhausts usExhausts, exhausts us. That exhaustion is not present In the morgue. And so In that morgue Flat out he lies upon a table. But every night I look and see, yes, A blind and palsied owl come sit upon the aswattha branch Blink her eyes and say: "old lady moon has sunk in the flood, has she? Marvelous ! Let's now catch a mouse or two!" Oh profound grandmother, is today still so marvelous? I too, like you, shall grow old-shall cast old lady moon across the flood, into the whirlpool. Then we two together shall empty life's full store. Translation: The Poet

Jibanananda Das

Naked lonely hand Darkness once again thickens throughout the sky: This darkness, like light's mysterious sister. She who has loved me always, Whose face I have yet to see, Like that woman Is this darkness, deepening, closing in upon a February sky. A certain vanished city comes to mind, In my heart wake outlines of some gray palace in that city. on shores of the Indian ocean or the Mediterranean or the banks of the Sea of Tyre, Not today, but once there was a city, And a palaceA palace lavishly furnished: Persian carpets, Kashmiri shawls, flawless pearls and coral from waters round Bahrain. My lost heart, dead eyes, faded dream desires And you, womanAll these once filled that world. There was orange sunlight, Cockatoos and pigeons, Dense, shady mahogany foliage. There was orange sunlight, Much orange-colored sunlight, And you were there. For how many hundreds of centuries I have not seen the beauty of your face, Have not searched. The February darkness brings with it this tale of a seashore, Sorrowful lines of fantasy domes and arches, Fragrance of invisible pears, Countless deer and lion parchments, graying, Stained glass rainbows rippling over drapesA fleeting glow from Room through anteroom to further inner room. Momentary awe and wonder. Sweat of ruddy sun, smeared on curtains, carpets, Watermelon wine in red glasses! Your naked lonely hand Your naked lonely hand. Translation: The Poet

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