I Came to This World with an Endless Leisure

 

I was born with all the time of the world-

I’m one such a happy-go-lucky poet;

I’ve bathed my body in the sea,

All alone in the darkness;

I’ve loved the colored sunlight,

I’ve wandered around the weary autumn field,

In the laps of green like a grasshopper.

I’ve seen a teenage girl plucking yellow rhododendron:

Her red wet dress draping her chest,

Echoing a melancholic tune of a conch.

 

The sky in the morn is bloomed

By the flocks of swans: their new songs

Trigger the new dawns-

The pink waves of the river talk a lot-

And they keep murmuring all along;

Yet their words are never devoured by the winter fog.

Someone sitting in the petals of a painted cloud,

Is listening to everything-

Or no one is listening at all;

Everything fades out in the blank mist.

 

I too will be wiped out one day like a spectrum;

And yet I sit on the green grass; fall in love;

Wait in a solitary seclusion for the sounds of footsteps,

With the yearnings of her love; collect the wild plums-

I’m supposed to give them to someone.

One can sit for hours on this soft grass,

Alone, with all such dreams;

And when it will be the time to sleep,

I will close my eyes. 

 

© Atique R.

It’s a translation of the Bengali poem, ‘Ei Prithibite Ami Obosor Niye Sudhu Asiachi,’ by Jibanananda Das.

If I Get an Eternal Life

 

If I get an eternal life,

If I can go on walking alone

On the paths of earth forever,

I will watch how the leaves grow green;

I’ll see how they turn pale and go off the scene;

I’ll behold how the sky becomes white in the dawn,

And is drawn to dusk with a reddish hue on its chest,

Like the blood splash of a slain munia.

I’ll be able to meet the stars, again and again;

I will see an unknown girl going away

With her hair freed from a loosely locked bun:

Her face missing the comely touch of twilight. 

         

If I really get a life without an end,

If I can roam around the roads of the world,

Alone, for eternity-for a time without bend-

I will see countless trams, buses and dust;

I’ll see bunches of slums, huts, swampy lanes,

Broken chillums and urns;

I will see quarrels here and there.

I’ll watch street fights, squint eyes, rotten shrimps-

And countless other things,

I won’t be able to put into words.

And still I won’t be able to see

A glimpse of you

In my eternal life,

Ever again.  

 

© Atique R.

It’s a translation of the Bengali poem, ‘Ononto Jibon Jodi Pai Ami,’ by Jibanananda Das.