'Paakhir Chhokhé Dekha' (Seen Through A Bird’s Eye) by Sunil Gangopadhyay

Translated from original Bengali by Saikat Guha


I.
A fountain-like grief, or the fountain itself is retrospective
I bath there, with grief
Neglected pebbles lay beneath feet…


II.
Life consists of three and half foot,
Fourteen hundred miles in between
Darkness…


III.
Why are you born,
While you can’t recognize
Love?


IV.
A puzzled doe playing
The doe never knew…


V.
The world indulges in light
Generation passes in dark room…


VI.
The room is so empty
Picture of the emptiness is hanged…


VII.
I was then nineteen,
Where have you been then,
Nira?


VIII.
Nira was here, now no one is here
Still in the stone
I feel warmth…


IX.
A rain came signifying something
Will you not open the door?


X.
In the letter you wrote
Rises the roaring of a storm, all of a sudden…


XI.
After the loss of everything
Remains a small piece…


XII.
Beside the shore of vastness
Only a touch of thumb…


XIII.
The march of death has stopped before prosody
Awake, o lady,
Awake!


Note:

   Sunil Gangopadhyay is perhaps the greatest poet and novelist of contemporary Bengali literature. A series of his love-poems about Nira (his dream-girl) is very famous. In this 'Nira' poem he recollects his intense love for the Begnali beauty--Nira’s coldness, the frustration of the poet, and his proposal of love to Nira once again. The poem is reminiscent of the fragmented style of Eliot. The imageries are modern, sensuous and beautiful.