Poems by- Somenath Roy
Poems by- Somenath Roy
(Translated by Kaushik Roy)
BLACK-BEE BIRTH
Because you were in my dream
I didn’t dream a bad dream
While swimming in the river I got past the log of funeral pyre
Waves saved me from the flash of fire.
When the untouched water flows far away
Fiery path keeps its door open
Going ahead some way I have returned
In search of rain in the sky
The mirror has shuddered to see my scorched face
Yet I have been sad to see stagnant water.
Not by the conch, by hurling my sighs I have broken ice
Coming down the stream you have picked me up on your lap
The more I have salved my pain by your serene touch
The more your tears have been charmed.
You keep me afloat away from the fire of incubus
Let there be my black-bee birth at every bend of yours.
RESPONSIBILITY
The thirst of bran in body has wanted sacrificial fire.
It is natural and its festival of well-being
Has indulged crop-field and weeds at random.
Light and air on the sea-shore and behind the hill
Are not revealed equally and health and education
Follow them.
Owing to inexperience of preservation, the child-birth
Also takes the shape of malady
In the attraction for fire of the insects lies
The peregrination of the heart of the blind.
In the intensity of murder and suicide
It is the sacred embryo which is held responsible.
AN IDIOT’S OBSERVATION
My hands and feet are tied, ears bunged up with cotton
Eyes blinkered, mouth shut up with tape, body covered
With rhino-hide, who just exists in the tent of parliament
I am just an empty and cracked bamboo to the eternal commission
I occasionally hiss but it is non-venomous and ridiculous
How was a man– dead or alive– vanished and by whom?
Who wanted to welcome him with bullet on his return?
Which treaty has preserved the fake ash in the temple of Renkaji?
A commission means a series of questions–
Some panic, some trading, then falling into silence.
There is no inheritance of ideology in democracy
There is only tail-wagging and turning tail of a dog.
Only exists a nation of idiots and sluggards like me and us
Who always pass off bondage as freedom
And treat Subhas Basu as viable commodity.
