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Poems on Nature and Journey

by Anjan Sen

 

JOURNEY

Flowers bloom in the footsteps of one who goes

Pulling away all attractions and burdens

And while going, sweat stains the chosen path.

Flowers bloom, the journey becomes meaningful.

A flurry in the path of speech

Oblique attractions

Startled, one hesitates

And goes again

And in going words become fire and water

Earth and universe.

Speech continues

And the earthly rhythms of common speech

Become verses

Going .

 

1989(Translated from Bengali by Amlan Dsgupta ,Collected in Goudbochon Kothon Bisswa, 1993)

 

Flow

And flows goes on

Standing rock- deep in the holy river, the hibiscus sky

Where hast thou come O river

The flowing locks of the destroyer, in mountains

When the fire of the skies cool, water

Drenches the soil and soothes the eyes

Life flows on through the rain,

And men discuss it as hope

And sing its praises

Call the river their mother,

Sing hymns

In their primal, magical belief

Sky rain mountain river water

Flowing

 

1989(Translated from Bengali by Amlan Dsgupta ,Collected in Goudbochon Kothon Bisswa ,1993

 

Komal Asawari

Komol Asawari permeates the morning

Another Chaitanya sets out

O has your sleep broken

A terrible dream

 

The Komal Rishav permeates the morning

Another Chitanya floats down the sea

O the fierce sea

Perception is swept away in fragments

 

Tenderness permeates the morning

In sleep in torpor

Another Buddha becomes a tree

An old man is found dead on the pavement

 

Approaching that real thing

Concrete or abstract

The fantasy of a dream on sharp perception

Dialectical opposite

Permeate the morning

 

1985(Translated by Amlan Dasgupta ,Collected in Tin Bisse Din Rattri(Days & nights over the three worlds) ,1988

 

 

THE APE

The skin of metabol wears out

An ape appears

Out of banana park

Jumps up and

Makes graces

 

Who are you laughing at?

 

1986(Translated fro Bengali by Udaya Narayana Singh ,collected in ,Collected in Tin Bisse Din Rattri(Days & nights over the three worlds) ,1988

 

 

On the Hills

Hari Oum on the hills

I was listening

The stones were rapt –listening

Bade Ghulam singing Hari Oum Tatsat

The trees were listening

A mountain tune going round in the air going

Round and round placid cold

As if there is no more agony

Scattered hills become one ,is becoming one mountain

Unbroken immensity

 

I was descending

Everything somehow becoming lowly

Feeble voice saying

Oh so very poor

 

Of Nature

He walks to the beat of the madal

Runs the whole field to the river's morning

Leaves sing silently

Flowers suddenly blossom near the new sun

The water said to the sea come with me

The sea spoke of the sky

The sky began to grow larger

Touched a mountain and became infinite

The koel bird found its song

A flock of parrots flew off in bunches

On the other side of the river

Many unknown voices float down from the sky

How do the sun and the light expand

The shadow of fathers, forefathers, ancestors

Touch the ground

Where were they where am I where will I go

Many more departures remain

The morning sunlight spreads its wings

 

Original title "prakritir".First published in(Bengali) "Sundar" ,2000. "madal" =folk drum . Ccollected in "Bhando Bevando"2002

Translated by Subha Chakravorty –Dasgupta

 

 



 

 

Fear

Everything a gaping emptiness then

Very tiny the sun

Just like the earth a creation.

 

Burning Hiroshima

Chernobil, Fukosima

Scorched in the rays

Has burnt cognition and imagination.

 

Somebody was crying

From those pre-civilization days

Crying right up to over-civilization

Many pictures of burning stand still.

 

At dawn the sleep was broken

Somebody was crying.

 

A boy suddenly keeping the history

Of wars and science on his face

Has become afraid

 

Translated by Subha Chakraborty-Dasgupta

 


Of the Water


I  don’t  know what is afloat

A corpse ?

The canoe sails on

It has become a skeleton

Having drifted in the dark Yamuna.

His heart distraught, the boatman tows on

It keeps floating   walks the water.

The river water swells

It stucks water

And swigs all that it contains

 

In our three-fourths of water

this one-fourth land is visible

The water swirls around it,.

The sky, hills, farmland twirl and become seas

Deluge-

We are floating like fishes.

Propitiate us, O water ! Satiate !

It sucks and swigs water.

The dark sea has a low tide now.

 

Translated by Udaya Narayana Singh

 

Of Narmanda

 

This breadgiving river, this water, this Narmada

Will stone-fetters bind it

Will the river stop

Water bells ring out jingling

Life-bearing sounds

The water is speaking to man

Strength give people strength O river

The stretching shore beyond the shore

The freshness of corn

Huts who will destroy

Row upon row of stones harden in darkness

Row upon row of people sing songs of the river

Where do you come from river

From the tide of life

Flows the river, flows into a million souls

Let Narmada live

 

Original title “narmadaar” ,first published in ‘Anubartan”,1998. Ccollected in “Bhando

Bevando”2002 translated from Bengali by E.V.Ramakrshnan

 

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