"... Her mouth won't flare into fire any more ..."

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Ms. Basu

Banalata Sen

_____This is a translation by Anjana Basu from the Bengali of a poem by Jibananda Das, a poet who died 50 years ago, about a legendary woman who he loved.

Centuries of trudging up and down this way worn dreary world
From Ceylon's seas to Malaysia where the bitter waves break and swirl.
I have circled these. The great Mughul's vanished empires
Have seen me, time after time, and Samarkand's once legendary spires,
A tired wanderer tossed by life's rough waves again and again
Except for two breaths of peace - from my small town Banalata Sen.
Her hair is the forgotten darkness of Nineveh's night
Her face Tanagra filigree: it's as if a despairing mariner
Rudderless and floundering caught sight, in the middle of barren islands,
grass green harbour
That's how I saw her in the dark saying, "Have you come home again?"
Lifting her deep bird's nest eyes, my welcoming Banalata Sen
At day's end silence rustles dewdrop down.
Twilight falls. The hawk wipes the sunshine from his wings
All the world's colours dim to parchment brown
Stories unfold their bright sparks in fireflies' rings
All birds fly home to their nests - rivers run - life's give and take ends
and then
Remains only the darkness and there with me my faithful Banalata Sen.






After Banalata Sen

Come to my house one afternoon
And hear the angry voices and the wind
Blowing through the corridors ...
Pigeons guard my dim green room
And chase echoes away with their cooing
My heart's a pigeon, a feathered bird,
That shifts, takes flight and rides upon the wind
A pigeon's my pillow and their wings
Are my coverlets
Will you lie then in my dim green room
Beneath birds' wings - chase out the world
For a while?
Or does your heart wander through lost empires
with the hawk,
Do you nest in her eyes at nightfall
In her sandalwood eyes where peacocks die?
Turn again to meet the girl with the bleeding
mouth at dusk -
Her hair smells of musk, as mine does not.
Kiss her in corners that reek
Of the damp and the rot
Where people whisper like lost ghosts
And white cows walk
Among the nests of marigolds.
Banalata Sen - yes, turn again,
At the drop of dusk where she lingers,
Just ahead in the last of the light,
Seems to hold up the curtained night
With her white conch-shell fingers.
Consummate your lust with her
Upon a library floor- perhaps exorcize
her bird's nest eyes

Her mouth won't flare into fire any more
Her tears are the falling rain.
Ashes and lust and Banalata Sen
Lie in the dust - again
With all those dead distant empires
And the white cows with gilded garlands.
Sailor, my room is no echoing tomb:
Come to me one afternoon -
And hear the wind.