Come Some Day
Come to our home someday
I’ll show you the portrait of Tapati, Anal’s too
Faded yet you will know them
Change Tapati’s name if you will,
Tear Anal to pieces
May you raise a wall before me
It is you provided me with this home
Lest my feet touch them
With caution I’ve thrown the flowers
And the sacred leaves into the waste
Come someday they will tell you all
Even if a wall stands in front
The pictures are hung on the walls
They gather dust, spiders weave
And the pictures get a wrap
Knots tangle up my words
I am helpless inside the mesh
I cannot come out of the wrappings
Come someday and see all
Tapati and Anal and me
Our room, arranged table, wrapping on the table
And dust on the wrapping
I Grow Old
I look on
The boys go, the girls
The green fades on my person
Pale dry branches stretch
Motionless I stand
I grow old
They set me aside
Their gaiety goes on day and night
Who are they, who fathered them
Desperate they cross the bounds of birth
And march on
In full swing the fete unbearable
In the light in the darkness in the light in the darkness
In a circle within a circle
They have the glow of fire
Charred with fire their everything
They know how to burst into flames
But know not what it is to be burnt
Helpless I grow old
Leaving them to themselves
All the nights and days
Here I have the grey evenings
Colours shed on the way
Deep darkness lies ahead
As I fathom the depths of darkness
I grow old
Translated from Bangla : Satyendu Gupta
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