The Carnage

All I want is peace--
Silent peace.
Is that too much to ask for?

I had my dreams
I had my expectations
Unbridled and unaware
Brimming and spilling over….

But love’s young dream
Had to grow up.
They grew up into illusions!
My acre of grass
Stretched into monstrous palaces!
Ur chocolate brown eyes
Turned into an oasis….
Or was it a mirage?

And then the carnage started….

Shhh….
When u sing, a thousand bells
Ring in my head
It makes me wanna scream my lungs out--
Don’t break me over and over….

Silence
Is that too much to ask for?

The Duck

this is the translation of a poem by Joy Goswami, from his Sahitya Academy Award (2000) winning collection, পাগলী, তোমার সঙ্গে titled হাঁস.

Did u not know, serenity is in fact a season of rain?

Nobody did tell u, such a season he is

Who can throughout the year, soar across at his will

Soars across the sky

Today, it rains here a little, and tomorrow, the sky there is overcast

Accompanying that, blizzard and storms keep blowing

I close my eyes and I see, soon as it starts pouring

Kids all sprint towards the fields, and leaning by the mud-walls

And tubewells, the village women, whisltle out to their ducks,

From the gullies and the gutters: choi-choi, choi-choi,

Choi-choi…. in the Bengal of a century back,

A childhood friend of yours, used to whistle to you, choi-choi

And tease you, do you remember?

Today, in this life, u are the duck of a cold country, from seas unknown

to unknown seas u swim— across ocean after ocean

u soar away to distant lands….

But this time, even in this life,

Someone is calling out to you, by that hundred years old

Neak-name of yours, in complete silence is he calling you! Choi-choi,

Choi-choi, choi-choi, — and maybe u hear nothing,

Nothing at all, isn’t it?