In the twilight's shore of time, sitting still...

 
Beloved Saikat, I'm not asking to see you.
I'm only saying: be careful, be well, stay alive.


I feel so restless,
I still haven't learned to take death lightly.
People around the world are dying, we are weeping.
When death cannot be stopped, we must weep.
Today weeping is truth.
Today death is the way.


My heart burns for you.
I miss you terribly.
If I should go in this crisis,
we will never meet again, will we?
The dead cannot see,
the dead cannot love...


Will you come once? I'll watch you from afar.
At the corner in front of my house—
will you come and stand there for just two minutes?
Will you smoke half a cigarette there?
Can I watch a little from the balcony?


Or shall I come? Tell me, where should I come...
What if we truly never meet again?
The day I am no more,
who else will you keep in neglect then, tell me?
Before I go, won't I see you even once, Saikat?


I don't know what I want to write.
I can't understand what should be said now.
Today it feels like
there was so much to tell you.
Will nothing more really be said?


My heart is not well.
I'm somehow shriveling in melancholy.
This has never happened before!
I came this far carrying a whole burden of sorrow...


When this world becomes healthy again,
if I'm still alive then,
the roads I found with such difficulty
to hurt myself,
I'll close them one by one.


If I get another life
I'll love you a little more.
The mistakes of this life
I'll correct one by one.
Believe me, even in this unbearable moment
dreams are not running out...


And if I die, then
even at death's threshold
I'll die thinking of you,
leaving behind only a fragment of longing...
In this life I never got to have you!


So much pain has gathered in this chest, Saikat!
If I don't survive in the end,
if this pandemic truly takes me away,
still one regret will remain...
You never understood me.


Where the whole world is consumed with death,
there I still remain consumed with you...
Does such a life truly have any meaning, Saikat?


Long before this world was afflicted by disease
it was afflicted by love.
Even when cremation grounds descend on earth, nothing stops.
In the vent of my bedroom the sparrow has become a mother.
Will you give a name to the guest that came to their nest?