some poems by Jibonanada Das

Bonolota Sen

For thousands of years I roamed the paths of this earth,
From waters round Ceylon in dead of night
to Malayan seas.
Much have I wandered. I was there
in the gray world of Asoka
And Bimbisara, pressed on through darkness
to the city of Vidarbha.
I am a weary heart surrounded by life's frothy ocean.
To me she gave a moment's peace -
Banalata Sen from Natore.

Aabar Bochhor kuri pore

Amidst a vast meadow the last time when I met her
I said: 'Come again a time like this
if one day you so wish
twenty five years later.'
This been said, I came back home.
After that, many a time, the moon and the stars,
from field to field have died, the owls and the rats
searching grains in paddy fields on a moonlit night
fluttered and crept! - shut eyed
many times left and right have slept
several souls! - awake kept I
all alone - the stars on the sky travel fast
faster still, time speeds by.
Yet it seems Twenty-five years will forever last.
(After Twenty-five Years translated by Luna Rushdi)

Aat bochhor ager ek din

Nevertheless, the owl stays wide awake ;
The rotten still frog begs two more moments
in the hope of another dawn in conceivable warmth.
We feel in the deep tracelessness of flocking darkness
the unforgiving enmity of the mosquito-net all around ;
The mosquito loves the stream of life
awake in its monastery of darkness.

-One day eight years ago, translated by Faizul Latif Chowdhury]