Two Poems Of Subhankar Das

DISTANCE

Doesnot matter whether it is Subhankar or no Subhankar.
Carrying my own corpse like this. No strength in the whole body.
The crumbling structure cage gradually bends and then becomes
smaller getting rounded. Rain water imprisoned in the
eye balls of my hand. The wind sucks-in sun salts. The way
I die would tell about that courage. This is enough. The
light of the sky and wind are sullen. It seems it is raining
but not actually. My knowledge may not be perfect. Oh my
wings. My wings.Wings. My wings. Because there is fire
in the wings--the bones of the featherless wings are
flying in the wind. Just now, they would lie on this paper.
Side by side. My wings, my bones, my hair.



The Colourful Cockroach

Instead of this piece, I wish to paint a big cockroach --
Small thorns in its long legs create shiverings.
Assume that this piece of writing is a colourful cockroach
just after a while it would fly away with a flapping sound.
Are you afraid of cockroaches?
When cockroach flies in your room helty-skelty--
You call your maid with a loud cry
and ask her to kill the cockroach
but if the cockroach too gets coloured!
If while getting coloured, it becomes a butterfly,
then you would have loved it.
You would not have thought of the drain,
the hole in the basin,
of the commod's backside,
or of the pan of the urinal,
the cockroach which has fallen into any of them
and trying to rise with outmost effort
even while seeing this, you are pissing upon it
with devilish pleasure and a little bit fearfully,
you would not have remembered, that
if a little bit more colourful it would have become,
with its wings getting shaped like a plant,
then you would not have jumped up if it sat upon your body
rather you would have looked coyly
or thought about that girl
around whose head, not butterflies rather cockroaches
circle in hundreds.

These two poems were translated from bangla by Bishwajit Sen and was published in Postmodern Bangla Poetry 2003. Editors Samir Roychowdhury, Tushar Gayen and Kamrul Hassan.

Subhankar Das :Writer,Producer,Publisher of Bangla experimental stuff.Produced 6 short films with more than 16 international film festival fame and appreciation.Has 16 published books of Bangla poetry.Translator Of Allen Ginsberg's poems in Bangla