Embrace

The night is dark
and the stars are bright.
Mid summer breeze whispers
through the oaks,
The stars have come down
to kiss the dark pond.
You lay still in the dead of night -

As I hold you one more time,
in my dreams,
I feel you in my arms.

Galaxy away -

can you feel my embrace?
can you feel my love?

Death of a Poet: in Lorca’s Memory

Two guards in green starched uniform 
drag the poet along – 
The poet asks: why have you chained my hands? 
The two guards answer not; 
both their tongues are removed. 
In unclear twilight, sounds of heavy boots in their feet 
Hard sadness on their faces, 
Red glow of the billboard light in their eyes. 

A clay-tone road goes past the pond
circling the fluorescent bamboo grove –
the post-harvest paddy field is now
a newly created execution ground.
Four more guards stand there with rifles in hand
Thousands of men and women surround them
Someone has come on foot from far off Arhor field
Someone has come blowing the jute mill siren early
Someone has come closing his watch store
Someone has come loading a new film in the camera
Some one has come using a blind man’s cane
The mother hasn’t left her child home
The young man has got his lover with him
An old man is holding on to an even older man’s shoulder
All have come to witness
the killing-scene of a poet.

The poet is tied to a post
He begins to stare at
the fingers of his right hand –
A mole on the pinky, the ring finger ornament-less
The middle one has a slight, sharp pain, the index indicative
The thumb horrible, disfigured –
The poet smiles a bit and
tells one guard, the fingers are clotting,
unchain my hands!
Amidst the howling of a hundred people
the guard is deafened at that moment.

Inside the crowd, a scientist tells a butcher,
As human population on earth increases, count of chicken decreases
A grocer lights a ship-brand bidi and says,
even green chilies aren’t that hot these days!
A cynic utters to himself,
haven’t seen so many bastards together in my father’s life!
A defeated MLA tells a bodybuilder,
having too much nettlerash in my groin these days!
A beggar helps out a peanut-seller with change
A pickpocket’s hand suddenly becomes numb
A wharfinger gets worried with the thought of a flood
A headmistress informs her students:
Plato said. . .
A student hollers at a tall guy,
put your head in your pocket, bro.
One lady tells another lady,
they could have built a gallery over here. . .
One farmer advises a laborer,
can’t you pour pesticide down your wife’s throat?
One man tells another man,
the earth won’t be fertile without bloodshed.
Yet some folks cry out loud, they have brought
the wrong person. wrong man, wrong man!

At blood-red twilight,
there’s moonlight in the west, cloud in the south
An imperiled jackel calls in the bamboo grove
A frail shadow floats like the women’s vanity
on the pond water
few hundred birds chirp in the rattle–like Bokul tree
The poet pulls his eye from the fingers of his hand
to the center of the crowd
The mass takes him from the letters and lines
to the forest
The last light of late fall disappears
in the childhood’s grapefruit tree.
He sees, a bunch of fireflies in the
dark thickening underneath the bridge.
A sudden breeze unsets his hair, he realizes
that rain cloud is coming from the sea
Raising his eyes for the rain
he sees the forest again
independence of every tree in the forest –
A chameleon comes down slowly from the Gub tree
It calls precisely seven times like a watch.
Immediately the six passionate
deaf and dumb guards
raise the rifle in firing position –
As if in the middle there is an abductor
the crowd yell out angrily:
Inkilub zindabad!
The poet’s lips murmur voluntarily:
He whispers in delight
Longlive the revolution!
Freedom comes to man!
Release my shackle!
Looking at so many faces, the poet searches for a man
Looking at the females, he seeks a woman
He finds both
He addresses them in his mind,
Longive the revolution! United man’s and
every individual’s own revolution!

The first bullet goes past his ear –
the way it normally does,
The poet laughs silently,
His chest is torn by the second bullet
The poet as if still unconquered laughs out loud
The third bullet goes through his throat
He quietly says,
I will not die
Wrong, poets are not always seers.
The fourth bullet splits his forehead
The wooden post is crashed by the fifth bullet
The sixth bullet tears the poet’s right hand
placed on the chest into pieces
The poet tumbles to ground
The crowd rushes in to smear themselves in his blood –
The poet hears no sound of rejoice or despair
The moment his blood, brain and marrow hit the ground
rain comes down heavily from the sky
Nobody pays slightest heed
whether the poet’s lips have moved for once
before his last breath.

In fact, his last moment is spent merrily
Looking at his torn hand on the ground he wants to say,
haven’t I said, my hands won’t be tied in shackles!

Nandikar celebrates 50

It is a momentous occasion that a theatre group is celebrating 50 years of existence. In a time where popular culture and media is replacing traditional forms of performing arts, it is a great achievement for Nandikar. I am personally very happy because I have been fortunate enough to know the creative brain behind this group Mr. Rudraprasad Sengupta and few of the leading characters in the group. On this historic day, on their birthday announcement card was a poem by a very famous Bengali poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay with a translation by Swatilekha Sengupta of Ghare Baire (a film by the Indian filmaker Satyajit Ray) fame. I took a humble attempt at doing my own translation. So here it is -

My precious, my jewel,
my dear child,
What would make you happy,
what would you take
this year?

Feed me
a cupful of milk daily
Buy me two earthen toys.

Rather -
Splash a burst of colors
into the sky
And
erasing all evil, spread on the ground
a peaceful world
for unending dreams.