Piper

Somewhere a flute is playing,

hungry for my pain,

its hewn from the darkest Yew,

planted close the tomb of Cain.

It sings and kills, a siren's trap,

bewitched, be-damned an air,

And all the while its prey merits

A joy too sweet to bear.

A joy whose end is strange and drab,

two penny puppet show,

the thrust of blade, a garden dead,

the piper's cue, "Let go."

Mes seins

Mother's blessings in golden cups,

Conventionally tied up neat,
Corsets and other lace stuff,
Cushion of lovers, the obscure orb
of desire, fancy and lust.

Or as the doctor says plain mammary glands.

Only for us the pain of keen
eyes, the hidden thumps
in a crowd, 
for ye merciless maggots.

মৃত্যু

অজানা এক মেয়ে, অবাক চোখে

দেখে আমায় আয়নামহল থেকে -

চুল যেন ওর কেমন এলোমেলো,

মাকড়শার সুক্ষ জালের মত, রেশম মিশকালো ।

দুই হাত তুলে দেখায় ছিন্ন শিরা ;

রক্তে ভেসে যাচ্ছে তার ক্ষত ,

জানালায় শোকের পর্দা জমে আছে,

প্রাচীন নীল জীবাশ্মের মত ।

শরীর ভেঙে কান্না নামে ঘোর ,

মোমের মত গলতে থাকে ছবি,

থিরথির করে কাঁপতে থাকে আমি,

পর্দার আড়ালে আমার কারা।

A drowning song

Leaves float golden on a silver bank,

kissing the dark heart of ocean,

soft, like dew on dewdrops melt.

My heart, a coral, asleep among the reeds,

evades the diver's eye, unless he goes

deep, deep, my love.

Caliban

The wind in my hair,
the stars in my eyes,
I will ever live like this,
the son below the heaven's stair.

Oh my life is killing me,
but the rain is cool,
it makes me lie on grass,
and dream like a fool.

For ever and ever,
I would dream of grace,
purity of the jewel sky,
the thunder cloud's silver.

Last Dance

Red in my lips, the red beneath your flesh,

dance and meet in rhythmic pirouettes,

My heart, a coal that burns and sings,

in the agony of ebbing romance.

ওরা

প্রতিটি গলিতে দাঁড়িয়ে থাকে,

ও একই রকম দেখতে বলা যায়,

অবিকল এক, নিপাট তেল মাখা,

সস্তা ছিটের শার্ট, ময়লা পাজামা,

একমুখ দাড়ি আর লোলুপ চাহনি।

ছোটলোক বলে ঘেন্না নয়,

পুরুষরা ভেতরে এরকমই মেয়েরা জানি ।

কামনা

সত্যি কি চাই কি জানি ?

গরমে শীত, শীতে বসন্ত,

ব্যাথায় মলম, প্রেমিক ঘালিব,

আকাশে তারা, নরম বালিশ ।

পেয়েছি কি ছাই,

সিরাজির স্বাদ আফিমের মৌতাতে ?

তুমি

ভাসিয়ে দেবে জানি একদিন সব চিঠি,

পালতোলা নৌকো হয়ে ওরা আসবে আমার গাঁয়ে,

মেয়েরা সব করবে আমায় ছি ছি !

শব্দগুলোর শব পোড়াব না তবু,

চিন্তা পোড়ে না তো,

কেন পুড়বে শুধু মুখ ?

Remembering Yeats

Should dreams be red?

cause mine are all blue;

cloudburst of memories,

moonshine and the surf

gyving in an ancient dance,

on a still bleached white shore,

my skull, rags and bones.

Day breaks, the candle end is near.

Suicide

Suddenly it seems, you don't matter.

No, you don't matter any more,

yet it hurts all the same

cause you still got a soul.

Your tears have dropped invisible,

like those who died long ago,

and only the wind's memory,

shakes your heart to and fro.

Shadow land's Shadow Queen,

your life's a queer sunless stream,

vain and fain all attempts

to break the curse and laugh in pain.

Greyscale

Poison floating from several spouts,

savours the redness of my lungs,

down past my minty morning mouth,

digging my grave in a nicotine drain.

Stubs, tar and other things,

swirl about the insensate tread, 

liberally lined with ash pits and sins,

smoke and char the windows, screens.

Survival

Billy, Billy, boy,

Got a new toy,

Bang bang boom,

The world's a tomb.

Boy, don't you cry,

Nor shout in joy,

For every tear or laugh,

Fall flat on majors like chaff.

Camp like hell,

Feed as a horse,

Who knows when the war gets over,

Could well be a corpse.

Slight touch of a button,

Dead beat mutton,

That's how it ends,

Them bloody fast lanes.

A Song

"Its over", you claimed,

nothing, not an empty dream,

of love is left today;

"Get out", you said,

and tears since made

my eyes blue roses of pain.

Easier said than done,

to kill your own sick memory,

wiping the blade clean of past.

Douse one fire with fiery grape,

vowed to cure all lust,

still ashes hide a flickering flame.

Suburban Express

Vendors’ plump wares, dusty from road,

otherwise pure; jalebis stacked on trays

dripping sugary sweat on palms,

gur and bangle-bindi sellers

cross section of cucumber, gram, puffed rice with chilies

gulped down with bottles of water,

sudden craving for chai coffee or soup,

beggars and college boys with spiky hair,

sticking out in a pan Indian local (train),

where days crawl in petty peace,

early risers drowse and drool on your pocket

unabashed. People in an almost condescending mood,

jerk out of the trip, the dim, soiled memory of suburban bliss.

Love lost

The words he said

rang out like pious bells,

chanting, a holy prayer.

Now his lips are still,

as the air shivers

at their wintry knell.

Death in life

Death is more like love,

you wish not to have your fill,

nor know what lies ahead.

And the heavens, a rosy vision

until you discern the worm.

Morpheus

Almost too slow to come,

mild as Jesu's hand,

he will arrive, to smooth

away your anger.

After the barren,

long day of pain,

there will be Spring,

in your heart at least.

You will smile

even for a while,

in a dark, lonely bed,

otherwise called 'life'.

War time

When your country is at war, soothsayers gather
to hoard the spoils of hunting days;

buzzing loud over the trenches deep,

around mother's hearts and a yellow press-

Their hands red,caked with blood

of honest sacrifice, as they prowl
about the piles of bone restless,

to build an empire, with intimidating howl,

Until the bonnet bursts with pestilent curse
and the earth dries up like good old Mars.

Nemesis

I dream of escape from the blood thread snare
of your pouncing gaze,
Leopard lust, hung amber torches,
all along the staircase of sleepless wandering-
I move in the whorls of maze your eyelashes form,
Black, grimy and dipped with the poison of thirst,
I am the object the Future hunts.

Yeatsian Quintain

A tumble in the hay is all sweet in May,

Roses die where blooms the heather;

A tumble in the hay is all sweet in May,

And Swans croon ere they disappear,

The rushes lie at the bottom of time's meander .

Encounter

Rain pattered on my window a certain dusk,

I leaned above the pane to gather its husk;

round and smooth like bullets shot clean,

piercing the harvester’s skin,

or bold trellis of lover’s nails in the dark.

Rain hurled himself upon my window pane,

stirring up dust and memories galore,

and a whiff of old romance,

You’d find in Marquez’s Melancholy Whore;

the prey knelt over the threshold of care,

a young, demure Rapunzel,

who let her hair for the Prince’s stair,

taking the crone for her intended.

Remembrance

Do you remember how you took me to an empty tunnel?

We didn't kiss but held hands demurely, like children.

But I remember how you pulled me close scaring me with

stories of ghosts that haunted empty places, innocently.

It did not take much time to run down alleys and

hikes in the hot days of June or the rainy July after that.

My hair flying in your face as we rattled on the old bike

carefree, to pretended natural parks on the wayside.

That tempest tossed Poplar still stands by the green pool

as we first saw it, studying its ruddy face in a swoon.

And the Gulmohur blesses the old and the young akin

with her petals that strew the steps to the river this evening.

And the potter is building new images at this time,

Jesus, Mary, Kali all under one roof, I marvel at their permanence,

as we left our adolescent tears and impressions not on stone

but pages of diaries and ever changing breast of the waves.

I have come past you but not your remembrance

as the shadow of the sun glides over the railway plate

in each slow dusk or sudden rain.

From the home window

The rain starts pouring at night,
hurling and tumbling the swinging trees,
the leaves choke in delirious wine and
dance with the raucous breeze.

From the musty window sill,
all mist no snow can I see,
Only the old Hibiscus tree, scattering
a pendulous host of red fairies.

The headiness of rain swept, wavy grass
Sink in my mind as I breathe,
drawing mouthfuls of peace hard found,
in our narrow cells of grease.

Wife

When the sun dips low in the faraway pine woods,
my husband comes home with inevitable muddy boots;
the axe, shines silver steel, put proudly across his shoulder,
a stack of firewood rolled in his brawny arm, a sprig of occasional heather.
Unloading the bundles, he gobbles the porridge I made,
with amazing swiftness of a bird of prey,
while I cower by the oven, dreadfully aware of the night,
when he will turn to me in bed and lift his weapon to strike.