Banalata Sen

I have walked earth’s byways

for millennia

from Ceylon’s coast

to the archipelago of Malaya,

in the night’s darkness,

moving ever.

I have been a guest

at the now hoary court

of Vimvisar

and Asoka;

in the further dark

of the city of Vidharva.

Life’s seas foamed

all around. I was weary

And my sole respite came,

when

I spent a couple of hours

with Natore’s Banalata Sen.

Her hair dark, like some long gone

Vidisha’s night,

her face like Sravasti’s delicate

handiwork

Like some mariner,

helm lost, gone astray

in far seas,

by chance discovering

the greenness

of Spice Islands—

I saw her in the dusk.

And raising eyes, like bird’s nests,

she asked: ‘Where were you

so long?’

She asked me then

Natore’s Banalata Sen.

Evening comes at all our day’s end

like the sound of dew,

The kite wipes off sunshine’s scent

from its wings.

When all the earth’s colours are spent,

in the fireflies’ brilliant hue,

completing an unfinished tale,

an old script

finds a new arrangement.

All the birds return home,

all the rivers.

All the day’s transactions end.

Just darkness remains

and sitting with me

face to face,

Banalata Sen.

—Jibanananda Das, translated from Bangla by Ron. D.K. Banerjee; from ‘Signatures One Hundred Indian Poets’ edited by K Satchidanandan; National Book Trust, India 2000