Four Poems of Ashim Kumar Das

Ahsan Habib

 

In the Despair of Your Eyes

(Translation of “Tomar Chokher Hotashai”)

 

Down the darkened hill, in god-forsaken fogs

Shadows— 

Crows caw 

Winds break blowing.

 

Mirage-singed sand

Where sleep and dream merge;

In darkness  

In the blood cells

In the despair of your eyes—

My horizon sinks.

 

Now sleep upon sleep

In the wilderness;

Light 

Slowly dimmed; 

In the Galaxy—

Endless darkness.

 

 

In the Red Storms of Ludiomil

(Translation of “Ludiomiler Lal Jhare”)

 

In the red storms of Ludiomil

He now floats 

Like a dead whale 

In the faded sea of oblivion.

 

Darkness cries,

The moon too—

The roof of the sky collapses.

 

Now towards death,

Towards the primal beginning

In the dark of mother’s womb

Where all the ways end.

 

Deep black traces of the song,

Chandika’s locks—

Call me again, ‘Come’. 

 

I go down to the bottom of the hill

Where the fire is also confused

In its own flames;

The light of the world goes out—

Dark and only dark all around.

 

The red storms of Ludiomil,

The red wings,

Flare up, copious, and disappear—

I end up in darkness. 

 

 

Your Kiss Calls up Chaos in my Blood

(Translation of “Tomar Chumbone Rakte Sangbarto Sudhai”)

 

Your kiss calls up chaos 

In my blood;

The much-awaited night goes back 

To the fathomless hollows of the hills.

 

Then

The scarlet sun rises 

In the red foams of the sea,

Sharks’ teeth and whales 

Steal, terrified, into the deep.

 

The seascape is lit up,

Waves are dancing like Menaka;

The blue of the ample sky 

Grows deep and deeper,

Flowers smile all across the valleys—

All prehistoric mistakes;

Now the landscape goes out of sight.

 

We close our eyes  

In the ineluctable, intense flames

Of starry darkness. 

Your kiss calls up chaos 

In my blood

We wake up—

You and I. 

 

 

I Walk in Rain 

(Translation of “Bristir Bhitore Ami Hati”)

For Mohammad Kamal

 

You cry in rain

I walk in tears;

In the deepest of dark tears—

The eternal, sunless murmurs.

 

Songs of the extinct birds 

Of the deserted, coastal paths!

Yet you are there in my nerves. 

 

Rain keeps dripping

Blood drains;

The mind floats in lightlessness—

Yet my fog cannot douse that star 

Which is there, burning endlessly;

Echoes can still be heard 

In the soundless end of skies.

 

Indifferent, I walk day and night 

In the rain—

Walking does not spell the end of things

Although it is a loss, a great loss.

 

There will never be kisses anymore

Frenzied deaths

Induced by endless rounds of embrace—

There will be only bleeding 

Inside the nerves, 

As the still, sightless inevitable—

You cry in rain

I walk in tears.