Sunday, January 10, 2021

Munira Chowdhury's poem Bhabanipurer Kobita translated in English

 

Poem of Bhabanipur

A river from the blood another river

Rains fall in Bhabanipur of oblivion...

Rains fall

Rains fall

I am seated with eye-split rains in my lap

The  pieces of my devil’s pillow are helter skelter

Sleep arrives…

Sleep can not wait anywhere

Sleep can not run away anywhere

Sleep can not sit anywhere

Sleep can not sleep anywhere

Random mirror faces stand in the dark...


 



Saturday, January 9, 2021

Munira Chowdhury's poem translated in English

 

 Translation of Munira Chowdhury’s poem"মৃতের মাতৃমঙ্গল"

The Dead’s Motherbliss

Water oozes out of two pierced eyes

In earth’s ancient grave

Alas ! In this stream of joy I also realize - rains have come,

Hard tortoises will dive into freshwater….


Flowers of rain at Patihar, do not fear O startled deer

We were archetypal brother sister in archetypal rains and deep forests

That is why I do not always remain human

Half male pied crested cuckoo and half female…

Me and my dead grandmother ( with her converted lover ) smear rain’s love song on each limb 


Alas rains ! Between the living and the dead

Eternal motherbliss…

2.

I have known leaning on earth’s window

Leaves of trees are trembling, fruit of paradise is hanging behind leaves

On the road descending into river faces of mild breeze float and drown…

Somewhat like flow of water slipping out of drowning person’s eyes

This way

Carefree, one life thus…

Someone lighted the first lamp before hazy twilight entered the room

That light is shining on the mirror

As if a firefly waiting for the great night.

3.

This time the for real the lightning flashes

The birds come out of cages

The birds sleep inside the hole of lightning and wake up again.

Gradually feathers are falling, leaves are falling, rain is falling…

Some people add plastic feathers on bodies of birds

Storm arrives again on earth

And at the end of each storm I see in the morning

Those birds are waiting in my yard  like the cloak wearing students of religious school.

4.

I hid the liquid tea garden in the flask

Now I get the fragrance of opium ; I am drinking longevity…

Skylight of coloured glass panes at the head of the porch

The shadow is gradually deleted

Porch hung on flower-pots become permanent on grey walls

Boring a hole in the middle of the room a cup of light lies still on the floor.

You are seated in cane chair, a runaway from paradise

On brown hair as if an old photograph’s full moon, clean air’s uproar…

And I want to be that person

Who can go beyond your acting and your voice.

5

You have made your own the right of green-violence

The way you desired

Within yourself…

Scorched heart beside blood

Incondite moon’s flesh and

You have enhanced the youth of burning scarlet hibiscus by many years.

Who are you eternity, 2017…

Today the low pressure touching Bay of Bengal is powerful

On a spring-day I had heard, the Prince will come on a horse chariot

That Prince has never arrived

Dear monster has come, who was born out of my skull

6.

Dreams also have palms, eyes, lips…

That shiuli-blooming dawn two years earlier had countenance

Today I opened up my secret ribs and saw

That only face of dawn of my life which looked sad...

I  secretly took out fall season from my grandmother’s brass box

Wash two eyes of dawn with heaven’s dews, complete sleep of Mathura Vrindavan.

7.

In this full moon night

Breath of forefathers are exploding in melting coffin

Giraffe's head is moving in the folds of paper, secret bloodflow

Blank paper’s face waiting with questions is dissolving in deep mists.

.

I stand still 

I accept fog bites….

.

At one point, the sun rose 

The smell of touchstone burst into the stomach of the pregnant mother.

White blood keeps  oozing from slaughtered words…

The rest of them are in a hurry to be hanged.

.

So that I may kill the words by hanging

I bring failed memory’s Meheknanda river instead of paper pen

God’s head hangs instead of words.

8.

There is no space in my journal

Night slit with blade and blood oozing from nerves all around.

Some blood though is burning. Pigs’ screams are floating from cut-meat..

Arils of peeled out moon is peeking out…

.

Journal contains head of deer, crow and pencil, my lover's heart and patihar

Dead God’s grave and incinerator side by side

Today a flock of dead birds have come from Babylon, for self-sacrifice once more.

.

I am hiding inside my journal.

Inside the ashtray of shadow and words I am becoming ash, ash.

9

I stay awake

I stay up all night with my  cut off hand in other hand

Towards the eternal dawn, the hand glows in the depths hand’s crematoria

I feel chilly when bone-throat become heated dense...I feel sleepy

.

In these Munira slumber there is no window, the doors' air is not friendly…

10.

Shadowy, wind is drowning in darkness, the face is not visible at all

Two vague shadows merging into the shadows

Same but so different

A body is moving on the ground with inactivity, innocence, apathy and extreme indifference…

And

The other is leaning a little, panting to get through the rubbish and bushes..

.

Occasionally trying to breathe intermittently

Then again she drags her burden more and more

was shocked to see what a little way she had passed !

.

When the shadows disappear

house and inside house and eyes inside eyes fall asleep

Maybe the rest of the earth’s light is  awake inside the firefly !

11.

Sound of fountains drip from folds of leaves

From bone to inside bones...

Running from the breast of  trees  to the breast of the birds, lamens of rain.

Annoyed

Songs of wind…

.

Hands-feet-fingers of the wind sink into our glass windows

In this dark evening of summer

.

Stand for long under the fiery black sky

Me and my younger sister named Suicide

Has the mist cover of your mirror now clear !

12.

Seems the pair of eyes are melting in sleep...

I row the boat through high waves

On the boat are my dead grandmother and a pinky cat of infinity

.

In the eyeless sleep everywhere it is sleep

On both sides of the forehead, the pulse drips like the waves of the sea

It seems to be a sea of two pieces of thought

What happened thereafter ?

No, what had happened prior to this ?

Though there is nothing like before and after

Journey is always that of the present

Boat, dead grandmother and pinky all exist at this moment

Everything is decided

Steady and running again

Everything swings in sleep’s huge butter...

.

No eyes on the face, no eyeballs in eyes

There is only all pervading sleep

Cascade of sleep within two eyelids.


 

 

 

 

 

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