1946-47

Subhransu Maitra

Original poem: Jibanananda Das
Translation: Subhransu Maitra

Amidst the insignificant bustle of activities here, there, and everywhere,
in the day around trucks on the road and on tramlines.
It seems as if somewhere someone’s house
will be auctioned dirt cheap.
The insane race that everyone’s indulging in
to get to heaven first before the rest.
Leaves heaps of people rushing about, gasping,
Yet only a few, too few—one or two—can snap up at an auction
house home furniture–
or things not meant for auction by depriving the multitude.
Rates of interest operate everywhere in the world:
not that everyone benefits from it.
The enchanting hundi-s change hands among the elite few.
The demands of these high-ups of the world throng
and grab everything, taking even the women.
All the rest-men and women-tend to fly away like
incessantly drifting leaves of autumn in the dark
towards a river, or into the earth—and merge
into some seed resurging afresh.
They dissipate in the darkness knowing fully well
that countless births and lives have been wasted
in the world,
They would have to return nonetheless
Drawn by the aroma of the sun
The sublimity of dust grass flower and seize
the familiar water, and conquest the deity of twilight.

Once they’ve dissolved—they are then dead-deceased.
To the earth the dead never return.
The dead exist nowhere; do they really exist?
It seems that the dead are not to be found anywhere
except in the pathways of the heart of a serene soul
pacing up and down the trails of certain Aghrahayana months.
Otherwise it would have been good before death
to possess light rice food sky and woman
with a certain degree of comfort and stability.
The hundred thousand villages of Bengal are
sunk in despair and darkness, silent, without oil to light a lamp.
How after sunset darkness of luxuriant hair
gathers her hair into a bun and arrives to receive—from whose hands?
And dishevelled she keeps looking on—for whom?
There are no hands—no souls anywhere.
There was a time when these myriad villages at night
would almost become as enchanting as bright-smiling
women of wide and beautiful eyes painted on canvas or
in floor or wall paintings—now all extinguished.

Not so long ago the aroma of new rice boiling at
annual harvest festivals used to regale everyone.
The countless neighbourhood crows would come flying
at the summons of the housewives blowing conchshells
to drink the nectar of rice toddy. Not a note or cry of those birds
is heard now. Human algorithm does not cover the number
of human skulls and bones. Endless it rests in the hands of time.
Over there on moonlit nights the farmers sozzled with
the wonderful rice toddy would dance away across the field
shortly before the wedding of the Bagdi boatman and
the Iswari wench and again sometime after the wedding,
before their child was born.
Now those children are all but dead—crushed by the mobs
of the stupid jaded society of an evil state in these times.
The grandparents of these rural descendants—even as they
Cavorted, played, made love—drifted into slumber, having
put paid to the permanent settlement of the zamindars in the dark.
Not that they were much more well off; yet they
were residents of another transparent world so different
from that of the rural creatures of today, blinded and torn apart
by famine riot misery illiteracy.
Is all that so obscure today? It’s very hard now
to think and speak well. The practice of propagating
half-truths in the dark now prevails; the habit of guessing
the rest of the truth alone after this in the dark survives.
Each looks askance at the other.
It seems that there is malice at the heart of creation.
The heart of creation: to seek and draw down pain
By piling our own dark doubts on our own sincerity.
Having first seen the ripple and cascade of a fountain
across rock hills nature I next looked into my heart
and found that a tiger even today stalks a deer because the first
primal water turned red with the blood of creatures slain.
I have killed men—and the blood spilled has filled my body.
Down the paths of the world I am a sibling of this slaughtered
brother. He knew I was akin to his younger brother, yet he hardened
his heart, went and killed me. I killed the bewildered elder and
I am sleeping, lying near the billowy blood-dimmed river. I lay
my face on his narrow breast and it seems that he came forward
to bring light to all the affectionate sincere souls in life, yet
fell asleep as he saw that there was no light to be found anywhere.

Sleeping, asleep.
If I call name upon name, he will come forth billowing
from the river of blood and approaching closer he’ll tell me,
‘I am Yasin, I’m Hanif Mohammad Makbul Karim Aziz–
and you?’ Lifting his eyes from the dead face he will
put his hand on my breast and ask as the river of blood
billows and churns—‘Gagan, Bipin, Sashi from Pathureghata,
Maniktola, Shyambazar, Galiff Street, Entally–
Nobody knows where they came from…’
They are-all of them-the rabble and dregs of social life.
Wearing worn-out torn shoes they go and buy flea-bitten stuff
of the market.
Through the tireless motion and drive of creation
these life particles came alive—and in the afternoon sun
these spurned ignored lives of the world unfolding like atoms
suddenly acquired a beauty in the bright eyes of a sage.
The peerless voice of time rings out through song
as soon as sound emerges from the collision of dust
particles thrilled by the copious cascading sunshine.
Who does time speak to singing? Before Yasin Makbul Sashi
suddenly came close to say something, it seemed as if
they had said a great deal from the heart of the one half
of the boundless infinite. Yet—
the boundless infinite is not a half; therefore those dreams,
tasks and all those words have disappeared into the
indivisible infinite;
there is none, nothing—the sun has fused.

Thus in this age there is much less light to be seen everywhere.
We have wrung out the sanctity of the lays of the world
Composed of ancient words, deeds, feats, pain, blunders,
vows and thoughts, and in the bargain we’ve acquired
sentences words idiom language and enchanting styles
of elocution. Yet without the radiance from the regions
of feeling, human language is no more than verb; adjective.
In disarray lie low the word skeletons without refuge
far away from knowledge, wisdom. Yet our science
of this century, enriched through multiple inheritances of
learning, is but a mere assemblage—an anthology of things–
it only tends to increase.
There is no meaningful knowledge in the world today
because this science is devoid of life; and without wisdom
there is no love, either.

These days can’t the voyager espy any healing beautiful
light, nor is there any darkness such as the mother night emanates.
Is there no more any great soul-immersive darkness in the world
today—a darkness which rinses the overwhelmed body
out of all flaws, and takes the overwhelmed soul of man
deep inside the companionless interior darkness of the self and no more
interrogates it or demands answers to questions asked in the past,
only enfolds in noiseless deathless darkness—
so that all crimes fatigue fear blunders and evils are purged of passion,
and life is slowly purged of sorrow, a sense of healing awakes in the heart–
as if somewhere out on the boundless ocean, the adorable voice of the wind
–resident among a few palm trees—comes closer; it is the breeze of
incessant wellness, wellbeing fanning the blood-smeared human soul.
And life is unstained.
Is there no more any such great soul-immersive darkness in the world?
Is there no more any balmy wind blowing in the world?
Profundity sanctity—none?
Yet even today people travel from unaccountable misery
towards healing darkness, from darkness
to their newfound young city village festivity holding their heads high.
So it seems that humanity has come out and away
from the ingrained source in its heart
of blunder and evil and retained, perhaps, the intrinsic potency
of the sphere of consciousness.