~~First Bridge of Sighs~~Am I late?
The first love lingers long in memory,
the first kiss leaves the deepest wound,
the first caress heals most tenderly—
let those first eyes be remembered still!
How impossible to say goodbye
when your throat burns with "Stay!"
So you do the unthinkable:
you hold back the salt, the falling tears.
But they will steam for years to come
and you will hear that cry echoing in the dark,
and others will rage at it endlessly,
……Yet remember: "Often, loneliness is not the enemy."
I feel your hands trembling—
reaching backward into sorrow,
they wander on pilgrimage
through familiar, worn-out places.
Button after button they undo,
they falter and the garment falls—
all the words from those nights
drift in silk and foam.
~~Second Bridge of Sighs~~
When everything inside you gutters out
and the pain is unbearable,
When you're caught somewhere tangled
and wait endlessly for rescue,
When you're humiliated,
cast adrift, stripped of name,
Lift your head, don't surrender,
don't despair in that captive dark.
Give back all the humiliation,
the pleas, the fates, the bitter days.
Return them so all remember
what they have done as well.
But don't let it die—
not one grain of kindness—
for someone waits for it,
drowning in their own solitude!
~~Third Bridge of Sighs~~
After so many years of forgetting,
I stumbled on the trail today,
and somehow it led back to you.
I read through old letters slowly
and remembered our time…...
Did I really love you that way?
Did you love me so completely?
Was it not a game—
a little real, a little naïve?
Or was it simply love…...?
I've forgotten the final clue,
but I know I never forgot you
just as I'm certain
you have not forgotten me either…...
And I remember those moments,
how you gave yourself that instant
for the sake of sweet memory.
Love was truly beautiful,
though mercilessly brief.
Yet while it lasted, now is the hour
to return it all
where it belonged before—
into the past, mine alone, though lost forever.
I know one word that
fills the void with longing
and makes the heart cry
howling in the winter frost.
That word reaches toward you
but often shuts the door
before it can arrive.
I've gathered it from every wasteland.
This word is so small,
yet weighs so heavily…...
~~Fourth Bridge of Sighs~~
Fiction is every other beauty,
though beauty lives within it.
The truest part is loving itself,
finding you were with a kindred soul.
Even a lover's rain feels like life
because it reaches for the earth.
The truest part is loving.
The finest moment is that instant
when you understand you're in love,
forget all calculation of days.
Because every single day shines so
that you greet each one as birth.
When we loved each other,
sometimes when I was honest,
sometimes when it seemed
I thought I didn't love you,
I couldn't measure truthfully
how it began or where it would end—
our love, refined in gossip's fire,
bloomed green for one day.
Perhaps we were cursed by others—
their black magic cast upon us—
and perhaps they sinned greatly
to make us love—truly and falsely.
I'm not grieved the feelings faded,
not sad you left too soon,
only sorry they could not grow,
and sorry for the wounds of bitter insult.
Whenever they hurt me,
whenever I was with another girl,
whenever they claimed to be right,
I understood: I loved you.
~~Fifth Bridge of Sighs~~
I know loneliness now.
The silence where the clock is heard.
A clock that marks time.
Time I spend waiting for someone.
Someone who will never arrive.
But you perhaps know
how longing for a warmth that never comes
drags with it that word…...loneliness.
There is something I puzzle over—
how love transforms into malice?
How does this sad alchemy
enter the heart—
instead of the nightingale's song,
the dark crow's caw?
What sweet poison…...
do you drink enough of it?
How a tender embrace
becomes a heavy chain?
There is something in this space,
unclear to me…...
Explain it to me, you who are wounded by love—
how does the heart love
for only moments?
Malice reaches all.
Love falls short.
Wind with black curling hair, playful,
wind with rainy threads, spinning tales,
and beside me, cloaked, it weeps…..
he did not come!
he did not come!
he did not come!
I'm not angry, dear girl!
I understand—the rain held him back!
The one he loves
is here!
~~Sixth Bridge of Sighs~~
I leave you because I love you.
I leave you because I know you'll be happy,
I'm not the dream girl you need,
and you are too beautiful to me.
Share your life with another.
Don't be cold toward her,
give her all your love.
You think I'll forget—
but remember, my heart breaks.
You were my first love
and I know you'll be my last as well.
I cannot hate you, I'm sorry.
I love you madly, but I'm silent.
I love you—why hide it?
Is love forbidden?
Have I no right to love?
Yet we will meet again,
we will greet each other quietly.
Whether your heart trembles with joy
or shrinks in acute pain, who can know?
The years, and there are many,
will sweep past like a whirlwind.
Snow will fall into our eyes.
Your gaze will ache
in the mirage of those vanished days,
and there, worn by the storms of our time,
the ink will hardly be legible…...
and dearer to you it will become,
those pages that held a heart.
After every love sets,
pain and sorrow come.
After every faith fades,
only darkness remains, only darkness.
When you watch someone leave
you have no power to stop them.
When you see love dying
you cannot die with it.
You understand that dreams deceive,
that you loved and did not love,
that pain is an old story,
that you were happy
but did not know it.
Don't be angry that I loved you—
I didn't choose to, but my heart won.
I've grown so used to your image,
but it's hard without your eyes.
~~Seventh Bridge of Sighs~~
I don't believe I loved you—
it was like a hundred years ago,
now we are two enemies—
we were two fortresses, today just two ruins.
I don't believe I kissed you
though my lips still burn,
I don't think we swam through clouds,
but I remember every moment I missed.
Out of jealousy, ridiculous, out of doubt
our days drowned in bitterness,
hatred instead of bright days struck
our eyes with sharp lightning.
I don't believe I loved you
though they are sweet memories to me,
we simply collided through the years
swept up in the whirlwind of wild passion.
For tomorrow I order loneliness,
I will be silent, marble, and white,
you will touch me only with sorrow,
you will make my tears whole.
For today I am yours once more,
with the final kiss, smaller now,
I searched for your sign,
and did not find it.
Yesterday was true sin,
though love lasted only minutes,
laughter flooded into my eyes,
and I refused to think of tomorrow either……
……tomorrow I am ordering solitude!
~~Eighth Bridge of Sighs~~
Life comes to us too often
like cold black coffee,
dull as yesterday’s newspaper,
like an old, worn-out refrain.
Fragile memories stretch long and rusty,
and we shred love into pieces.
We are always searching for a place in the sun,
dreaming of new roads.
Blinded by pain and sunsets,
we remember old passions,
we hunt for words that vanished long ago,
we chase perfect happiness always.
And in this chase, fevered,
we let small joys slip past,
we squander bits of tenderness,
we push away the ‘little’ happiness.
~~Ninth Bridge of Sighs~~
Can you sense enough—
to see beyond the light,
to hear beyond silence,
to taste sweetness,
to smell the perfume of a sunlit rose,
to touch an unbearable tear,
to kiss your dream?
I want you to sense that much—
I met you without knowing I would fall in love.
I was searching for you, not knowing I would find you.
I found you without knowing what to feel.
I fell in love, not knowing it would wound me this way.
I changed without knowing it would be for you.
I loved you, not knowing you could love like that.
I suffered without knowing it was grief for you.
I hated you, not knowing I actually loved you.
I cursed you, not knowing you would not forgive me.
I lost you, not knowing you would not return.
I know—my pride
you measure
and you wish to break
the love
in me—
but you don’t know, perhaps,
what it means to love,
or you abandoned it……
all in your youth.
Will my heart bear
the cold,
will I find strength
this time too,
will loneliness pierce me
like a knife,
and how shall I remain without tears
the moment memory finds us?
It was decided—
I will say it again—
do not suffer, do not suffer,
do not grieve……
Every door
I close behind myself
and I will be left alone
whoever you are with……
~~Tenth Bridge of Sighs~~
Your bed—I will come to it,
let us divide the air between us two.
Truth in words is rare—
we will speak them and forgive ourselves.
Leave me a place beside you,
if it is empty, I am coming.
And do not heed what people say
about us not being made for ‘us’.
We will sit in the shadows,
we will lean our shoulders close,
do you think they will tremble,
our knees when they touch?
A gentle embrace will carry
currents from our young days,
only the ache of memory
will disturb our delayed longing……
A Bridge of Sighs.
First.
Second.
Did you never tire
of showing me
your indifference?
Get better,
go away!
The cold is numbing
my senses
after this ice—
storm.
In the snow, in the dust, rest
my eyes that burned
from staring at you.
It aches, it weighs—
the rosy apple
I never gave you to bite.
It was not early,
it was late,
and like an honest gardener
I cleared away the mold
of memories.
~~Eleventh Bridge of Sighs~~
I am young,
I am old.
I want to close.
I have bread to sell.
A grown child.
A small one.
I have just finished,
I begin again.
I am beautiful today,
tomorrow today will fade.
I want to be young,
even as I am out of fashion.
I want to go
dancing with you,
you stare at me in wonder—
Wait! I am not two centuries old. Like yesterday it was— with the sunrise, we went. Isn’t it yesterday? Are we old? I tried to make you happy, but in happiness, you don’t know what you are, for you, it is something to have a fight with, you cannot have the sun for making it feel offended, that shines. I tried to buy you love— shamefully cheap, you saw, with a volcano of feelings, I flooded— I almost died of boredom. I tried to dream, to light you, I almost became a sorceress, as you are afraid of certain failures, and you are not taught to fly. I was desperate for you to adjust, to look with your eyes, but you are only used to being born and watching your whole life. You cannot handle it yourself, you get sick and it hurts, you went wrong to drown stubbornness, let it weigh on you. ~~Twelfth Bridge of Sighs~~ Most women are good. Many of them are beautiful. Some are wonderful, even smart! Remarkable, only a few. The extraordinary ones can be counted on the fingers. Tell me, where are you? As long as we have the strength, let’s split up. We have not built anything and we do not move anywhere. All lanes are down. Let’s go. The caresses he left behind I returned them to you in cash. We have no takes, no gives. Terrible peace! The sun has even stopped. This is good. Nothing lived between us, to die. ~~Thirteenth Bridge of Sighs~~ I will meet you someday, ten years from now, me with my husband, you with your wife. The kids are with us, the waves are blue. The sun is shining, but we are with others….. Something will probably go to hearts, something from a past sign. The wind caresses our faces, the summer is here again…. We will meet in thirty years. We will stand against each other. Again, over the heads the skies are blue, me without a husband, you without a wife, I know, then we will remember our bold dreams….. and starry nights with the breath of the sea….. Already with the hair of the snow, skins turned white, time will even stop for a while…. The tremors will beat the hearts again, we will long wander in the dark of night…. We two will realize the true world: our first love is by the grave! Just the waves below us on the rock, they will gently whisper on the beach….. ~~Fourteenth Bridge of Sighs~~ We lived on a crest in the summer, we were soaking up the air of dreams, the voice of the stranger echoed within us and we were fed by the sun’s rays…. And we drank without measure until fainting from the wine of the unknown, we wanted, and we loved, and we suffered, we forgot about reality. But here is summer, the stars of heaven are far off and so, the unknown became vicious, that we are praying for real tears. Where will be you thirty years from now? I feel like I will meet you again accidentally, thirty years later, but our first meeting is so unpleasant to me and I am so sorry that it just happened…… I am annoyed you are so far away that you laugh, rejoice and grieve, and all my memories have been deleted and in love with another you are silent. For foreign lips maybe you keep cursing me and the flame in your eyes shines…… And you do not hear my sad oaths and the songs that the wind sings….. Now I am young, strong and beautiful, now I am ready to be your dream that comes true! In time, I will be only a gray shade of our dear love remembrance….. I will surely meet you again after twenty or thirty years…… you will smile, I will clap my hands, but then, I know, I will sadly pass you by! I’m ready to help with your translation from Bengali to English. However, I notice that what you’ve provided is just an HTML closing tag (“) without any actual Bengali text to translate. Could you please share the Bengali poem or literary text you’d like me to translate? Once you provide the content, I’ll create a thoughtful, literary English translation that honors the original’s voice, imagery, and emotional resonance.