Profligate Tears

Cries and weeping. My life long
I have heard them cry.
Can’t take it any longer.

An untrodden way by the river
dense wood by the path
Cries waft across them
Who is it that cries?

I have seen my mother cry. And my neighbours.
Crying, they make others cry.
These I have witnessed

I have seen a woman cry
in the verandah of our school
I was kid in the second form then
One of the two khaki-clad men
had scooped up a soiled, torn blouse
with the end of his rod.

I didn’t understand a thing
I do not know yet what many cries mean
Or the mystery behind many others

A twenty one year old young woman
was to traipse along the college road
laughing out loud and merrily

A kid with slate under his arm
was to walk past, running to a tune
But they cry

Cries and cries
My life long have I heard them cry
I don’t like it all.
On his perched earth
this is sheer profligacy.

             [ Translated by Pradip Acharia ]

 
Hostage

Release all children from darkness
Return them their dream-filled future

Else the breath of all flowers and plants
shall be stopped
Else all songs and the twitter of birds
shall be stopped

I have kidnapped the fragrance of flowers entire
Barred the timeless utterance of each poem
and song on my lips

Release all the modesty of women
From cruel cells all vibrancy of youth and all virtue

Else the meandering of rivers shall be stopped
Each branch of trees shall be murdered

I have hidden in my blood the exuberance of all seasons
Have held hostage the unfettered life of forests

I shall compromise with none
Though dialogue may be, I’ll speak only
to conscience
Reason may mediate in some secret space

Deadline for release or death indefinitely
extends.

             [ Translated by Shantanu Phukan ]

 
Prison

This prison is of yours

I’ve promised the woods today I’ll seek capture
I’ve said to rivers today I surrender

I confess to all my crimes
Oh honoured courts of justice
Look, my plans to murder loneliness
Look, all over myself the weapons of love and pain
The heart itself is a weapon

Cross examine me
I’ll tell you the name of that Simalu tree
Confess under which sky
Confess under which cloud
Life’s strategy was planned

Oh honoured courts of justice
This prison of yours, this barred room

Open your iron gates, I myself shall enter
Myself shall give up
Let me lay on your hands the murderous look of my eyes
The sharpened songs of my lips

What more witness do you want, what more proof

This bloodless hill that you see, even its silent streams
Knows of my sins

This prison of yours, oh honoured courts of justice!
Arrest me!

             [ Translated by Shantanu Phukan ]

 
Abhimanyu

A poem has been following me eternally.

And I have moved from one street to a garden,
From one lonesome valley to a conrnerfield,
Gradually I have moved away from the womb of a river
towards a confined gully.

Like a moving meteor I have sped through the skies,
Have crossed the milky way and the starry galaxies.

For the fear of a poem, I’ve moved
Over the nocturnal sea and the huge harbours.

A huge poem has been following me over the ages-
From one era to another
And I’ve been looking for the closed seclusion
of a refuge,
From one civilization to the other.

I’ve fast changed my orbit, lest a poem touches
me ever.

From a rosy garden to the butcher’s
From the known city towards the gallows and the inn,
From a restaurant towards a dustbin and a bar.

I’ve been unnerved by a poem
And I have set foot on a perilous page of an
indifferent anthology.

A poem has been following me eternally.
It has built speary sword with its worlds.
And I have been wounded eternally.

Unaware often I’ve entered into the whirlpool
And I’ve forgotten the way from there.

A poem is slowly devouring me and
I have turned into the meal of a poem.

             [ Translated by Garima Kalita ]

 
The Stony God

Once I made a stone my God.
I picked up a hard dry stone; and chiselled out a statue;
I set my lips, nose and navel in the body of it.

And dedicated my eyeballs easily
Marked the forehead of the stone with vermilion blood.

And I made it my God.

I gave the stone the power of my limbs, my legs
And cast my heart in its breast
And filled its arteries with my breathings.

And I spent everything save my soul.
The stone was gradually abounded with my flesh.

But once my lonesome heart too, was snatched from me
I lay inert, a stone.

I turned into a stone, inert, immobile
And my stony God mocked me and went away.

             [ Translated by Garima Kalita ]

 
Crisis

I’ve slain the man with ferocity --
Made to pieces
An innocent body of flesh and blood.

After that I could not stand there.
After that I could not come back from there.

Even after death he stared at my hands
With such a fearless but painful look
Gruesomely his eyes were moistened,
I felt as if
The blood-stained sword
Will come out of my fist and fall.

Now, it is calm and quiet.
Nobody ever asks me
What’s my need, for ever.

             [ Translated by Ranen Chakravartty ]

 
Address

Mails do no longer come to my old address.

Now-a-days, I no longer stay at love-villa.
The post office named heart is
Now far away from my house.

The postman grief does not know my new house.

As in earlier days I no longer sell my heart.
Neither my body can no longer supply
Flesh as per the need of the market.

So disposing my earlier property
I’ve reached a new town
Where there is no sorrow, no death
No heart, old age, love or sin.

I do not have my old address.

If you wish to send a letter, then address
It to the cemetery.
If you desire to send a telegram,
Pass a chit with my name written on a hand
Of a funeral member.

At midnight I will receive your message.

             [ Translated by Ranen Chakravartty ]

 
Setting Out

I don’t know where this road leads to.
There’s no willingness to know it now.
Nor curiosity.

But the day I began this endless
Lonesome journey, I had in my pocket
A sketch of a map of this road.

I collected bread and innumerable coins
(Even an unlicensed gun for self defence)

But I didn’t have a plan with me
So I began to lose myself in the potholes
And the wayside woods.

             [ Translated by Dilip Kalita ]

 
The Pursuit

I followed in the footsteps of a wrong man.
Standing on a wrong bend of a wrong road,
He showed me a garden of mistaken flowers.

That was a wrong scene, that was a wrong sight.
Wrong day, wrong feelings, that was a wrong dream.

I was advancing towards a wrong address.
Standing on the verandah of wrong house, I saw wrong faces,
Preparations of wrong reception.

My expectation was wrong, wrong was the time,
Wrong directions, wrong speculations, my calculations were wrong.

I followed in the footsteps of a wrong man
Accurate was that pursuit.

             [ Translated by Dilip Kalita ]