Camel
Even I am your companion – walking over sand all day long
Long-necked – with festive-less solemn eyes –
Listen, I
have been awake many nights, written many poems like a fool.
Do you have a manager?
I will give you more cacti, deposit half a rupee – or else in the afternoon
I’ll peep into the hotel’s kitchen
You and I have this feverish dusk
looking back at us. Jhumpa’s mother and Jhumpa are sitting alone in the verandah,
The month of phalgun is here – let’s go – take me to your country
Read the Bengali original here.
The Story of My Disappearance
How did I disappear, don’t bother to find out. So many people disappear
anyway. New clothes, table lamp, remain properly arranged – and
suddenly I wonder whose teardrop rolls from the veranda. The night falls.
Listen, I got mixed – like sand — with people. On a fragment of home,
on roads, sitting beside drains, I have passed my life away – saw,
in a tea shop, angelic Debdut washing the cups and plates and falling asleep all the time. Oh unfamiliar people, I have loved all of you. Oh waves of iron, stones,
I have wished you would blow me away like a waterfall – I wanted
the house not to appear like a ghost’s house. Through window after window
the day the breeze comes and blows away your colourful curtains, from the thick darkness
of your office-furniture, day dreams will wake up in abundance, know:
I was also among these things – like a dry calm – pale, alone…
