Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Poems by Shakti Chattopadhyay : Translation from Bengali by Pinaki Sarkar


Poems by Shakti_Chattopadhyay

Aboni are you there in the house ? (অবনী বাড়ি আছো?)

Behind the closed doors the neighborhood is sleeping
I only hear knocking of the night
Aboni are you there in the house?

Rains fall here all the year
Clouds roam here like buffaloes
All the eager green grass
Grab the door-
Aboni are you there in the house?

In my half dissolved heart within a faraway pain
I sleep and fall asleep –suddenly
I hear knocking of the night

Aboni are you there in the house?

******


Why the Tree (Gaach Keno)

Why the tree talk against another tree ?
I don’t know, why do birds fly ?
Like the clouds in the sky is the scent of flowers-
I don’t know why there is beauty in the hair .
I don’t know why the tree talk against

another tree, trees are not human.

*****
Easy (sahaj)

I thought that I will talk a  little easily
You made it hard
I have nineteen ways, but the beginning is only a fist-
I thought that I will talk a little easily !
Thought that I will go home but there is already somebody there
I guess there is no place for me there
the pull to draw in nineteen ways has tied me nineteen times
with my voice enmeshed in complexity, I cry to you from inside
I thought that I will talk a  little easily
could not get to say anything.

****
When are you coming ? (aascho kobe)


On the banks of Roro river that kid
found a colored breast feather
and getting a stone, wrapping it with
the feather he threw it from this side
after all the feather will not go alone on the other side ?

A big dark male was on the other side of the river
showing off his portion of the red headgear…
kid saw that for so many lines and posts
difference will not go just like that ?

I found and threw the breast feather
-when are you coming ? when are you coming ?  when are you coming ?

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