from Bonolata Sen
Translated from the Bengali by Souradeep Roy
Translator’s note: I began translating Jibanananda Das roughly from September, last year. Das is often seen as the mythical lonely poet, both when he was alive, and more so, after his death. Sometime last year, I began to feel a tryst with Das, having finally understood what it takes to be “the loneliest poet”. Translation is a kinship poets have with other poets. These translations are evidence of my kinship with Jibanananda Das, my kinship with loneliness. I owe him gratitude, fraternal wishes, for taking my side.
Grass
With a soft light, green as the leaves of the infant lemon,
the world has been filled up this early morning;
the green grass like an unripe grapefruit – its scent just as good –
are being ripped by the deers with their teeth.
Even I want to drink the green scent of this grass
like alcohol glass after glass,
strain its body – rub its eyes against mine,
in the wings of the grass my feathers;
may I take birth as grass, inside the grass itself, descending from the delicious dark body
of some thick grass-mother.
Darkness
Woke up once again to the lapping of the ruthless river;
looked up to see the pale moon has wrapped up half of its shadow from Vaitarani
and thrown it towards Kirtinasha.
I was sleeping by the river Dhansiri – on a wintery night at the end of the harvest –
knowing that I would never wake up again.
Won’t wake up again – won’t wake up anymore –
O moon with the fragrance of musk, dimmed into a faint blue disk,
you are not a light in the day, not an enterprise, not a dream,
the peace inside the soul, the peace and stillness of death,
the infinite sleep inside the soul,
you don’t have the fierceness of a spear to break it,
you are not the kind of pain that continues to burn endlessly like wildfire –
do you not know moon,
O moon with the fragrance of musk, dimmed into a faint blue disk,
O midnight, do you not know
I have, for many days –
for many, many days – for long, silent ages –
after going to bed with darkness and sleeping with death
found myself to be alive among men at the horrid crack of day
in the stupid delight that the sunlight thinks it brings with itself;
I have felt fear,
felt an endless, unstoppable grief;
have seen the sun waking up in a blood-red sky
and ordering me, in a dry tone, to don the costume of a human soldier
and stand up to the world, see its face;
my insides, then, were filled up with hatred – sadness – anger;
the world, inflicted with the light of the sun, appears to have begun a festival
of crores of grunting pigs.
Ah, festivities!
I have tried going back to sleep again
by drowning the sun inside the radiating darkness
inside the penumbra of my soul,
I have wanted to mix into an endless death
inside the dark torso.
I was never a human being.
O Man, O Woman,
I have never known the world you inhabit;
yet, I am not a wanderer from another star.
Where there is a movement, conflict, direction, where there is enterprise, worry, work,
you’ll find the sun, the world, Jupiter, Orion, the knot of an infinite sky,
the squeal of a hundred pigs,
the pomp of the birth of a hundred piglets ;
these fearful rituals!
Inside the darkness, my soul is savouring a deep sleep;
why do you want to wake me up?
O Time, O Sun, O the Cuckoo of Winter Nights, O Memory, O Winter Wind,
why, why wake me up.
From a silent night’s sleep, I will not wake up to the lapping of the ruthless river anymore;
will not wake up to see the lonely, assorted moon
has wrapped up half of its shadow from Vaitarani
and thrown it towards Kirtinasha.
I will keep sleeping beside the Dhansiri river – slowly – on a winter night at the end of the harvest –
shall go to bed with a darkness that never ends –
knowing that I won’t wake up ever again –
I won’t wake up – ever, ever again.
N.B. Jibanananda Das translated this poem into English. His translation was followed by these notes:
Vaitarani: equivalent of Lethe
Kirtinasha: lit. destroyer of great works. This epithet is synonymous with the river Padma, and refers to its erosive capacities.
Walking Along a Path
Remembering some kind of a cue I didn’t quite understand, I have walked the city’s paths
all alone; have seen a lot trams-buses everything basically plies well;
then they leave the road and leave for their world of sleep:
for the entire night the gaslight understands its job well and keeps itself lit nicely.
No one makes a mistake – brick house signboard window door-panel terrace everything
keeps quiet and feels the need to sleep underneath the sky.
After having walked all alone I have felt their deep peace in my bones;
then, it was very late – then, many stars had come near the lonely towers of monuments minarets
and quietly surrounded them; – wondering whether I’ve seen anything possibly simpler
than this: a handful of stars – and – monument-filled Kolkata?
the eyes move down – the cheroot keeps itself lit silently – lots of dust and hay in the wind;
I close my eyes and move to a corner – from the tree many cream-coloured wilted leaves
have flown away; in Babylon, too, I have walked in the same way into the night
don’t know why; even today I don’t know after thousands and thousands of tiring, difficult years.
If I Had Been
If I had been a wild duck
a wild duck, if you had been one too,
on some horizon, beside the Dhansiri river
near the paddy fields
inside slippery reeds
in a secluded nest filled with seeds;
then today on this phalgun night
on seeing the moon appear behind the branches of the jhau
we would have, while smelling of the waters from the lowland,
spread our bodies across the silver crops –
in your wings my feathers, in my wings the pulse of your blood –
in the blue sky, countless stars like the golden flowers of fried grains;
the phalgun moon
like a golden egg
inside the woolly nest in the siris forest.
Maybe a sound of a gunshot:
in our flight the force of a plunging wave,
in our wings the exhilaration of a piston,
in our throats the song of the North-wind!
Maybe another round of gunshots:
our silence,
our peace.
There would not have been, at least, these little, such little pieces of today’s death at all;
would not have been the taste of these little, such little pieces of disappointment and darkness;
If I had been a wild duck
a wild duck, if you had been one too,
in some horizon, beside the Dhansiri river
near the paddy fields.
After Twenty Years
After twenty years, what if I meet her again!
Again, after twenty years –
maybe, beside the ripe paddy
in the month of karthik –
then the evening crows will head home – then the yellow river
will soften softly amongst the red reeds, lie pale at our feet – inside the field!
Or maybe there’s no paddy in the field;
there’s no hurry, trust me,
from the duck’s nest
from the bird’s nest
chaff and straws scatter; inside the muniya’s home there’s night, there’s winter, and drops of dew!
Our lives have taken a walk, distanced us by twenty, twenty years –
then, in this wet path, what if there’s a meeting again, between the two of us!
Maybe the moon has come up in the middle of the night, behind a crowd of leaves with a few thin, such thin, black, such black branches,
of the sirish, or maybe the jam,
of the jhau – or mango,
in her mouth;
after twenty years, when I can’t remember you, my memory such a drought.
Our lives have taken a walk, distanced us by twenty, twenty years –
then, what if there’s a meeting again, between the two of us!
Then, maybe the owl alights, toddles across the field –
in the dark alleys of the babla tree
through the windows of the ashwatta
the saga of your hidden frame!
The wings of the kite fold like the silent dropping on an eyelid somewhere –
golden golden kites – they’ve hunted down the dew and brought it for you –
after twenty years; in that same mist, what if I again find you!
O Kite
O kite, golden-coloured kite, in this afternoon of wet clouds
don’t cry – okay? – while you keep flying beside the Dhansiri river!
In the tune of your cry, her pale eyes – like a cane fruit – come floating.
Like the virgin princesses of the earth, she has left us, gone far away;
then why do you keep calling her back? O, who loves to dig up the heart and uncover such sadness?
O kite, golden-coloured kite, in this afternoon of wet clouds
don’t cry – okay? – while you keep flying beside the Dhansiri river.
Cat
All through the day I keep meeting a cat no matter where I go:
under the shade of the tree, under the sun, amidst a crowd of brown leaves;
after a few bones of fish from somewhere
it has taken its soul and sunk inside the skeleton of the plain soil
like a hushed bee deeply absorbed in something;
but still, its clawing the bark of the krishnachura,
it’s running after the sun the whole day.
It can be seen in one moment,
it’s lost somewhere in the next.
On one evening, just during the start of winter, I saw it
playing with the saffron sun, caressing its soft body with its paw.
Then, it snatched the darkness inside its paws, moulded it into tiny little balls,
and threw it all across the planet.
Jibanananda Das is the most significant poet in Bengali literature in the post-Tagore era. He was the most significant in the Kallol era, which pioneered modernism in Bengali literature. His collections include Jhora Palok (Fallen Feathers, 1927), Dhushor Pandulipi (Grey Manuscript, 1936), Bonolata Sen (1942), Moha Prithibi (Great Earth, 1944), Shaat'ti Tarar Timir (The Darkness of Seven Stars, 1948). Jibanananda died in a tram accident in 1954. In 1955, his Shreshtha Kabita (Best Poems) received the Sahitya Akademi Award from the National Academy of Letters. Posthumous collections include Rupasi Bangla (Beautiful Bengal, 1957), Bela Obela Kalbela (Times, Bad Times, End Times, 1961). Several of his works were published posthumously. which include several unpublished poems, novels and short stories. His critical study of poetry was published as Kobitar Katha (Some Words on Poetry). All the poems translated here are from his third collection Bonolata Sen.
Souradeep Roy is a poet and translator. His latest publication is the poem "A Brief Loss of Sanity" published in The Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing, Vol. 6, edited by Meena Kandasamy and Eunice de Souza. He currently lives in Delhi and is part of the editorial collective of the Indian Writers' Forum, where he manages their two sites, the Indian Cultural Forum and Guftugu.