If I Were a Wild Swan

 

‘If I Were a Wild Swan’ is a translated poem, with a slight change from the original one (Ami Jodi Hotam) by Jibanananda Das, the pioneer of the modern Bengali poetry, the uncrowned maestro of mind-stunning metaphors: my first love like millions of Bengali readers who like to read a couple of lines from a poem, sometimes in a lonely leisure on a rainy day or on a moon blanched night or in a winter morn or anytime anywhere with a hot cup of tea or without. His works have got an undeniable impact on readers or poetry lovers, avid or nonchalant, who can neither feel nor deny that there is something to be indulged in, there is definitely something to be lost with an outpour felt deep inside in the life on the other end of the reality.

Ami Jodi Hotam (If I Were) was translated into English by the poet himself and was published in the 1945 anthology of Modern Bengali Poems. However; I have never had the opportunity to go through that version of the poem. But, I did dare, may be for my love for the poet and for the imagery, to try my own version with a little change as I didn’t feel like bringing along another swan to be shot down…

 

If I Were a Wild Swan

If I were a wild swan

In a quiet nest,

Deep inside a swamp bush,

Close to a wheat field,

By a calm, rainy river

By the end of a horizon;

 

On such a night of spring

With the moon rising above the cedar woods,

I would glide along the silvery crops in the sky,

Leaving behind the lure of the maddening smell

Of warm water of the marshes-

 

With my feathers feeling the touches of your wings;

My wings in the beats of your veins-

A million stars glowing the deep blue sky,

Like the golden flowers flaming the wheat field;

With the March Moon looking like a golden egg

In the green furry nest of maple grove.

The sound of a sudden gunshot:

My diagonal fall,

With the joy of ecstatic piston on my back,

And the songs of the north wind in my tone!

 

May be the second gunshot:

My stunned silence,

My peace.

There wouldn’t be the fractions of death anymore

Like the life we are dragging on…

There wouldn’t be any burden of despairs

With the unfulfillment of our little hopes,

There wouldn’t be any darkness, either;

If I were a wild swan,

By a calm, rainy river

By the end of a horizon,

Close to a wheat field…

 

 

© Atique R.