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
The More-Mother (La mamadre)
My more-mother comes by
in her wooden shoes. Last night
the wind blew from the pole, the roof tiles
broke, and walls
and bridges fell.
The pumas of night howled all night long,
and now, in the morning
of icy sun, she comes,
my more-mother, Dona
Trinidad Marverde,
soft as the tentative freshness
of the sun in storm country,
a frail lamp, self-effacing,
lighting up
to show others the way.
Dear more-mother—
I was never able
to say stepmother!—
at this moment
my mouth trembles to define you,
for hardly
had I begun to understand
than I saw goodness in poor dark clothes,
a practical sanctity—
goodness of water and flour,
that's what you were. Life made you into bread,
and there we fed on you,
long winter to forlorn winter
with raindrops leaking
inside the house,
and you,
ever present in your humility,
sifting
the bitter
grain-seed of poverty
as if you were engaged in
sharing out
a river of diamonds.
Oh, mother, how could I
not go on remembering you
in every living minute?
Impossible. I carry
your Marverde in my blood,
surname
of the shared bread,
of those gentle hands
which shaped from a flour sack
my childhood clothes,
of the one who cooked, ironed, washed,
planted, soothed fevers,
and when everything was done
and I at last was able
to stand on my own sure feet,
she went off, fulfilled, dark,
off in her small coffin
Where for once she was idle
under the hard rain of Temuco.
—Pablo Neruda, The More-Mother/ La mamadre, from Where the Rain Is Born/ Donde nace la lluvia from the collection Isla Negra translated by Alastair Reid, Rupa & Co. 2005
Those that will never come to my home
Those that will never come to my home
I shall go to meet.
A river in flood will never come to my home.
To meet a river, like people,
I shall go to the river, swim a little, and drown.
Dunes, rocks, a mountain, a pond, endless trees, fields
will never come to my home.
I shall search high and low
for dunes, mountains, rocks—like people.
People who work all the time,
I shall meet, not during my leisure hours,
but as if it was an important job.
This first wish of mine I’ll hold on to,
like the very last one.
—Vinod Kumar Shukla,
‘Jo Mere Ghar Kabhi Nahi Ayenge’: translated by, Dilip Chitre/Daniel Weissbort
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective
range — about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometers away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of the orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.
— Yehuda Amichai, ‘Time’ published by Oxford University Press
What is Tamara Saying with the Milk Bottle’s Nipple in her Mouth?
Only this:
Let no one harass the kitten
let none shoot down
bear-cubs in the forest
let not birch trees wither
hit by ammunition
let everybody on this earth
live as friends
let death return
the ones it has taken away
let there be no earthquake
let all aeroplanes land safely
let my father complete his poem
let all fathers become poets.
-Izet Sarajlic. (Adapted by Sitakant Mahapatra, from a translation by Marilyn Sjoberg.)