I have invited sleep to celebrate my wakefulness, deep; sleep came slept with my dream, my awakening drifted away in a void stream. Reflections of the far city lights sparkle on the flowing river of the illusive night, as flakes of hope shimmer in the dark depth of intense fright.
The distorted gleam of passing car lights on a pool of rain water, in splurges ,scatter under the speeding wheels; the constant rhythmic pulse of the impatient wipers draw glimmering images of hazy and glinting whispers on the canvas of the windscreens.
A longing homebound, throbs captive for a peaceful sleep in bed-spread darkness, moon slowly melting on sofa; mysterious solitude soaking in waving familiar curtains, crippled senses seeking another life. Distress of anxious time drift and float like ignored corpses for the assurance of heavenly chime.
My bengali poem Basundhara, which means ‘The Earth’, brings out the green essence of the earth. The earth never ceases to ooze out its blessings and love in spite of the severe tortures on it like the draughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquake, bombing, shelling etc.
The poem was originally written in Bengali, but one of my dear friends felt the urge to make it universal and to spread its fervent spirit also beyond the circle outside the language barrier. Both the versions are presented below
What's the worry! Here I am, touch me ! My open far grown fields nascent green, shy Call you by your nickname; Your loving names long forgotten, that are as ancient as the sky. Come, send your hissing roots in numerous sigh into my oblivion depth. Let your flowers bloom out my breath through your dewy despair, year after year.
How long will you carry the skeleton, age-old, on your shoulders, weary? The skeleton gets heavier, in pride and desire, leaving life,– a mere spectator. Lost your path? What's the worry! Losing is gaining as mystic as raining. Shells explode, fire-flowers bloom smell of gunpowder fills empty pride nourishing gloom.
When wars will fade into the walls of the borders, I will bear a child, coming into life with a dumb scream of the burnt green, fatherless; I will germinate green, - merciless. The primordial joy of creation helpless and shameless, will sprout in my breast. God will be born in my virgin lap, once again.
The blind grave-digger has now come to know that loneliness is not so lonely. It has silently covered his blindness like moss, along with his creasing old age.
The age-old burial ground has become his habitat since long. Now he can’t remember when Cynthia had suddenly matured into a grown-up lady tackling her clumsy motherless girlhood.
His blindness has now become his fondness for listening to the sounds of vision.
His spade works like assured hits of death on life. He digs graves with all his might; the spade thuds deeper and darker into the restfulness of the earth; the sound becomes grey to black, heavier down under.
One night the grave digger could hear the drops of moonlight dripping like melted butter on the crushing waves of the sea. But the moondrops froze the moment they touched the foaming waves.
That night, he was digging an emergency grave under the supervision of influential people and police. There was a scandalous murmur; Sound of some errant footsteps dissolved in the hissing sea-soaked sand. The unidentified corpse lay bare. No coffin could margin its relentless loneliness and silence.
After the grave had been dug hurriedly along with his team, he was asked to help them in dropping down the corpse into the overflowing emptiness of the grave.
When he uplifted the naked corpse, her thick curly clumsy tresses hung down and laced against his old wrinkled arms. He knew from the touch that those were clumsy curls, like wisps of smoke.
The mole on the naked back of the lifeless body, which his fingers got touched, was perhaps not so big when she, as a little girl might have run and chased dragon flies with uprooted bush in her little hands, merrily shouting, giggling and bouncing all her way.
War appears blind Like Homer; the lines of control shimmer like Helen, to stay alive here is fancy smitten. Every moment of suffering, staggers inch by inch, crawling. Dumb breath facing blanket firing feed the helpless flame of human cry.
To choose between ration and ammunition, Sustaining life is only an intuition. Food packs or bullets a burning irony to select. Triumph in war flutter in the wind beaten National Flag Victories and defeats, history discover in green silence of graves, long after.
Consuming fragments of streams, patches of clumsy meadows and dreams, Some chunks of valleys and hollows a few border settlement follows, blasting off ancient towns, demolishing relics and monuments, war crowns victory hoisting fame and sacrifice patriotism boils in more spice.
My sudden home coming with my legs amputated, my sprained life hesitated in the sudden change tossing and turning in my awful existence. The absent limbs throbbed pulsing and fluttering, they sobbed helpless at the hacked off ends.
How blissful and simple is to be able to walk without being disable. In the sudden change my living became a plight. I spread as a dark ray of light through the corridor of time's flight, through a void of being alive.
On the careless lane of dusty days Unsure were the footsteps, Busy were some strides of haste And some were strolls Of scented leisure. Treasure Of the profound waste Of empty times.
Wider grew the lane And longer, its trail.... With dust of nothingness, frail. The untamed weeds of wilderness Measured time.
Visions grew hazy Until the dusty lane disappeared In a whispering dot At the wavering line Of the glistening horizon.
Moon Drops creations 