যতটুক রয়ে গেল: চার

The Burning Desire of Life
If my poetry should ever carry the salt and intimacy of your blood, if it should grow transparent like the dew gathered in the eyes of a gentle doe, or if it should throb with the pain and brilliance of an ancient verse suddenly overwhelmed by the crane's lament, then it can no longer be measured by mere criticism alone.
If some young lover should light a lamp in the sky upon its deep-hued wings, if it should scatter around the intoxicating fragrance of musk and mahwa islands, if it should gather broken dreams and severed longings to build a new nest in some verdant grove, then it is no longer merely the craft of language—it becomes a living inner world.
And if that poetry should ever drench the harvest fields in the golden scent of autumn, bring down dew upon green rice paddies, or shatter even the stone of devotion in the scorching midday of Baisakh, then to call it merely poetry diminishes its glory.
Then it ceases to be only poetry; it becomes the burning desire of my life, the inner fire contained within my entire being.
The World's Motionless Gaze
What good is writing poetry? Far juicier, far more popular is this day-and-night spectacle of open and hidden infidelity, the strange interplay of man and beast, the fevered crowds circling the street magician—toward such things the age is drawn.
Where jasmine blooms, in which hidden garden fragrance gathers—these things rob some of their sleep. Yet a blind girl sitting in a dark alley sees Uttam's film *The Honeycomb* in her mind's eye. Beauty and want, dream and deprivation, both dwell side by side.
To seek poetry in this time seems futile labor; it lies like dry pebbles on a suspended board, lifeless, or multiplies like rats in a field hut—trivial and unremarkable. The decay, rot, and degradation of reality seem far more visible than the ornaments of language.
So I no longer search for poetry; I seek the melting life itself. For the age has changed, and the world's motionless gaze is now like this: cruel, mock-bearing, broken, yet inevitable.
Stay Here
Stay beside this field, along the ditch and streambed, in the presence of sibling villages scattered far and wide. Linger alone for a moment within these soft, dense, silent scenes. The long palm trees standing side by side then move their tender fronds like a mother's loving hand.
When dust swirls through the air and clouds shift their seasonal conversation slightly, suddenly the fields reveal green parakeets, plovers, and hornbills—unexpected, sudden tidings from nature.
If time ever permits, come here alone one day and stand. Come, and silently fill your breast with these local sights, scents, sounds, small unspoken messages.
Then let the day pass slowly, let afternoon slip away in silence. And at last, with gentle footsteps, like melting darkness, let night descend.
The One Whose Walking Does Not Cease
Some immersed wanderer walks ceaselessly; along an invisible road drawn through the breast of you, me, all of us. He walks not only in waking but also in sleep; as though his journey is rooted in the depths of flowing consciousness itself.
With him are woven the joys and sorrows of half-adolescent years, the hum of wandering thoughts, the dialogue of countless desires facing the noon, and the silent effort of solitary practice. Thus in the mirror of the eyes is painted an ever-luminous, yet fleeting picture of life.
One day that wanderer stands somewhere and hears the long, icy breath of the northern wind. He starts at the sound. For just as night falls seamlessly when day passes, so too does life take on another form in its time.
Yet he does not stop. He walks on without ceasing; alone, in silence, quietly.
# From One Pause to Another New Threshold
From an ending toward yet another flowering.
## The Deathless Color Hidden in Blood
Watering the earth, coaxing it tender and fertile with the sweat that drips bead by bead from the brow, uprooting tangled weeds—none of this exhausts the whole history of understanding. There is care, there is labor, there is tenderness; yet to comprehend life runs far deeper, far more intricate than all of this.
As thorns are inseparable from flowers, so memory of wound clings to beauty. No monument achieves completion through happiness and dream alone; it is suffering, finally, that constitutes life's truest substance. Even the rainbow's hue fades in time.
Yet in the deep commerce of light and shadow, in the depths of blood itself, there lies hidden an eternal, deathless color—one that passes beyond decay, that endures even through dissolution.
This is why the tree blooms again in the rains that follow. From the same soil, from the same depth, it blooms again.
## The Final History
One day all shall become memory: you, I, this house, the albums arranged throughout its rooms, the beauty of home and hearth, the intimacy of bedside, the hymns of dawn—nothing, it seems, truly endures.
Temples, minarets, shrines, prisons, human pride, human ambition, hands raised toward the sky—all these too fade slowly away in time. However haunting life's cry, however dark and glorious its lamentation, nothing escapes the law of decay.
Yet what remains is only fragile soil, scattered grass, deep and soundless color—these that hold, day and night, in sun and frost, with quiet simplicity, the playful reflection of the sky.
Perhaps in the end these alone are the earth's true history: soil, grass, and a melancholy sky.
## The Key to Childhood
I searched for it long. In old trunks, in the secret shelves of cupboards, in corners hidden away. Yet I could not find that key again. Where it was lost, I no longer remember.
And yet in childhood, the moment that key came to hand, a tremor of melody would awaken in the blood, a spring of joy would flow into the heart. It seemed someone from across a distant sea was calling to me with a gesture—invisible, yet in a summons so intimate and near.
That very key once suddenly unlocked a secret country's miraculous threshold. Outside, night lay heavy then, and on the mulberry leaves trembled drops of moonlight, and frost gathered. All together, the world seemed to stand at the hour of some mysterious unveiling.
But no one finds that key anymore. For the key, after all, is nothing else: it is that age which, once it falls like dew at dawn, never returns.
## Death's Futile Theft
How much is stolen from life's archives! The terracotta plaques of Paharpur, the ancient bricks of Mahasthangarh, the silent monasteries of Mainamati, the faded windows of Panám city, the dimming threads of embroidered quilts. So much history, so much art, so much accumulated treasure vanishes this way—sometimes openly, sometimes in silence. As river erosion steals villages, so time steals away many marks of the beauty humanity has made.
But the intimacy of a beloved face, the fragrance of touch that clung close to the breast, or the silent memory of standing together in a rain-wet afternoon—do these vanish so easily? They are lost, yes; they drift far away, yet they remain like eternal shadow. As a distant village whose form we cannot see through morning mist still makes its presence known, so too does love leave its mark even in absence.
One day death comes and draws the curtain, wishes to wipe all away in dust and dust. The face is gone, the body is gone, the sound of footsteps in the courtyard ceases. Yet there remain certain names that have been spoken, certain forms of address soaked in tenderness, certain light that lives on in memory. Love remains. Affection remains. The profound pull of human for human endures.
This is why death's plunder is never complete.
No matter how much it tries to steal, something remains indelible; as Bengal's soil yields rice even after the flood, so too does the heart hold fast to seeds of love even after loss. In this sense, death is the most defeated, the most failed of thieves.
Infinite Green Life
Now it is early autumn. Countless shadows of clouds descend across the fields; sky and cloud seem to lean against each other, cheek to cheek. On both sides of the path, the creeping vines brush the wayfarer gently, like the graceful arc of some bowed and beautiful form.
On the leaves of trees rest crowns of countless raindrops, in the reeds are woven a hundred soft white threads, and across the fields lies scattered an endless, innocent promise of harvest.
With this sight—perhaps something of even greater worth than this—we too, silently, weave within ourselves a line of our own infinite green life, reaching beyond old sorrows into something freshly begun again.
Now in the fields of autumn, dew is falling. The grass bows its tender head.