A Day, Eight Years Past

it was heard
they've taken him to the mortuary
last night - amid the usual February darkness...

when the crescent of the moon
had bade adieu to the shivering black sky,
he felt he wants to die

the wife lied beside, so did the child
there was love, there was hope - amid that starlit darkness

but, was it some sort of a ghost
that woke him up?

or, may be, he hasn't had slept in ages -
now he peacefully rests
inside the morgue...

did he wish for this slumber!

with blood-froth smeared lips
like a dead plague-rat's cadaver
sunk in the pitch-black gloom of a corner
he now sleeps...
never to wake up again.

never will he wake up again...

he'll never have to greet again
the incessant-incessant burden of waking up  --
told him the silence of a camel's cheek
fleeting beside his window after
the moon had set beyond the weird mirk.


still, an owl stayed up,
a quiescent melting frog
begged for a couple more moments
for the allusion of another morning --
in a conceivable warm affection...






[Translated excerpt from 'Aat Bochhor Aager Ekdin' by  Jibanananda Das; Picture Courtesy - Jakub Kujawa's 'Cocoon']