I can go, but why will I?

I've resolved to turn around.

Muddled my hands in black of dirt,
While time flew unabated.
Never sketched you in my thoughts
As you really are.

Now as I step near the edge of the valley
At this bleak hour of midnight
Moon beckons, in her maiden calls .
Quietly I stand now,with my heavy eyes
Moonlighting by the Ganges,
And all I hear are cries
Reeking of funeral and finitude.

I can go,
To Anywhere, and in any direction.
But, why will I?
.

I will leave,
Perhaps, not just now.
Will carry you along
Won't depart alone, untimely.

translated from bangla
"jete pari kintu keno jabo? " - Shakti Chottopadhyay

It's meaningless. The second day after the first .

The third coming after the second.But,
What after that?
Two souls replacing one,
Neat and peachy giving way to the ugly. But,
What after that?
This face. That face. All and sundry faces equal.

You promised home. We built one.
What after that?
You promised affection, We faked one.
Then?
How far can the road take us- the road of promiscuity?
I sensed no suspicion from darkness
While, the heart of affection
Roars within and without.

No - nothing beyond this - nothing beyond this.
Then, what after that?
Head to toe, toe creeping to its altar
What awaits after?



Translated

"Na" . Shankha Ghosh

Youth

Time unerringly bestowed responsibilites
I would otherwise not shoulder
But surpass, not caring
Whiling away with the thought of thinking.

Time came and went, her tearless eyes
Never waited for me to respond.
I would wait a little more perhaps
Feeling the pause between laughing and fading.

Zillions of mighty thoughts caressed me
Before the dark stains turned gray
Some that unveiled wrath, while
Some remained nimble pythons of time.

Few I loved, who loved me even more
Lips met, lips fell apart in denial
Now its only the inert softness
That lingers between forgetting and denying.

Few I played with, chased kites till the sundown
Because tomorrow then was but a caterpillar
Of the chaos of tomorrows- that hinders nearness
Fault is not with them. They stayed, while I ran heedless.

I felt lonely too then, while I walked many deaths
Crossing from one death to another, powerlessly trembling
And here I am, pale , suspicious, unbeliever, cynic
Measuring minutes, desiring people I evade from.

No steam germinates in me, still your eyes
When they meet mine, are shrouded in mists.
In loving you I stopped time, I'm never awake
I never sleep, never die and am never born.

Falling apart.


I have fallen from the caskets of your rhyme
Before your lips touched mine.

The shying shimmering sun of poetry besmeared
To the black ditch of night.

Perhaps in the chilly untimely eve
Long after I unfold my fists to the bleak hush
We'll cross the tranquility of a rebellious spring
Jittering away from a white New York.

Wheels

My violet of the east - like a chocolate
I gently osculate at her dew
Un-playing the violence of devouring.
Satiating, forgetting the long un-quenched hours
In that invention of contortion, of love.

And I tripped back and forth
In the abysses of thought.
Binging, incubating her bites.
Knowing incoherent strings of shattered nights
Unknowing blue skies from blue hearts
Indifferent she, flew in indifference.
Leaving behind traces on fragile wings
Of a grasshopper , oscillating between green tips.
Or soars away breathing on young lungs.

In those sights my vision gets locked
I See 'em in admiration, across draperies
Of transparent windows. Beneath, the blue firmament
Dribbles flurries, while the air gives shelter.

I'm short of breath; you have flown away;
Come back on wheels, conquering ephemeral defeats
As victory, as the eternity between lines of the mortal poetry.
And we'll be the songs in a pure land,
We'll be love, formless; and tunes
Melting into all and sundry skies of the Earth.

The usurper and the playmate.


I , in my dominion of carnal shelter
Saw two images, intricate to the fading imagery
Construed in peril and then dispatched in secrecy.
One of an usurper, his sad eyes seldom lied.
Spoke of red yolk of the sun, with the fragility of stumbling squirrels-
Images conjured to the soil, wet grasses of a far away summer meadow.
Dead to the outsider, debauched in alchohol
Pinnacle of death's armour, a lady once remarked
Only confused my separate self then
Who only glided in tricycle , while he warped in inexplicable madness.

Another lurked with chime, harnessing seasons with conferred finesse.
She poured on dead towns, while hers encircled topsy-turvies
Of known channels. Her hourly quartet warped manifolds of time
Widely and foaming to the singlehood of the lashing wrinkles.
Perplexed tricycles unfenced, staked hours to lid of metaphors
Only logics died then, to the sullenness of receding.