On the Death and Rebirth of the Poet

  
 A few furious, overzealous young men
 ready to humiliate, to trample the poet.
 The poet asked in wonder, with a touch of fear: Why this rage? What is my crime?
 None of them answered;
 their senses were severed, their conscience pruned away.
 In dim darkness or light, their ears catch
 the arrogant thunder of their own limitless insolence!
 Fire of envy in their eyes, timely slogans on their lips—agitated colored masks.
 They have mortgaged their hearts and conscience to take the field,
 today no one can bring them home.
  
 The gray road walked silently along the pond's edge,
 where the glittering thoughtful one lies and sits, gradually losing his way,
 suddenly sprouting in the fertile field
 the killing ground of the word-cultivator.
 At least twenty-four more young men stand ready with knives!
 Around them thousands of people—powerless, yet enthusiastically advancing.
 Some came resigning from cultivating distant fields of weeds,
 some came eager to settle the debt of unemployment,
 some came leaping from the unbearable tedium of the gossip room,
 some came emptying the memory of their picture-taking phones,
 some came leading the sighted blind by the hand,
 the lame mother didn't leave her sick child at home either,
 the young man brought all his shameless girlfriends, (they come when called!)
 even the old man's ribs show ghostly breath!
 Everyone came
 to witness
 a poet's
 murder-spectacle
 or for some unknown greater good.
 Human beings love to kill and watch killing above all else.
  
 Together they all bound the poet to the thickest tree.
 For work that needs at most two,
 two hundred pairs of hands reached forward.
 Always, in legitimate wrongdoing, hypocrites unite.
 The poet watched silently,
 they're shouting,
 Why delay?
 Pull out his teeth!
 Then the nails...
 Spreading hands on the ground and dancing a little on the fingers wouldn't be bad, what say!
  
 Before the next blink they cut off the poet's little finger's tip,
 crushed the ring finger,
 stuck seven fresh pins into the middle finger—it looks nice when you stick pins in someone else's finger, so...
 hammered the index finger at will!
 The thumb curls in pain—there they've drawn victory signs with knife blades.
 In today's grand arrangement everyone's a leader—
 no workers exist in the arrangement to harm endangered people.
  
 Yet on the poet's lips, traces of a smile...
 The poet said firmly to one leader,
 If you're going to cut fingers, then cut them properly!
 Why are you collecting so much blood like this?
 Don't let all the blood spill at once, brother!
 And listen... my hands are dangerous, not my throat—
 Remove the chain from my neck, let me breathe a little!
 In the revelry of thousands of spectators, the leader's conscience
 remained deaf to everyone's sacred interest in entertainment.
  
 From among the assembled crowd a banker said to a peanut vendor,
 Calculate and see, brother, whether all the ten-taka packets hold the same peanuts!
 A spice trader, lighting a cinnamon-brand cigarette, said,
 Look at this mess, in Kaliyuga all matches are fake!
 A Facebook celebrity took this opportunity to gain some followers, saying—
 Even such a bastard pig writes poetry! Beat the scoundrel!
 A modest, dull-witted clerk said to a curious fool,
 You see, brother, this is why I don't write poetry! Otherwise I too would...
 A beggar drops some coins to buy off an industrialist,
 a devil suddenly becomes a saint and spouts religious talk,
 a bribe-taker becomes anxious thinking of national decline,
 a Facebook feminist texted one of her followers,
 I was saying, if you could tonight...
 An impotent man said to the father of seven children,
 Only seven? If I were...
 One girl said to another,
 You know, I'm the heroine in all his poems! I never paid attention, but still... Hey, check if my lipstick has smeared?
 An employer advised an unemployed person,
 Instead of running around for jobs like this, why not start an independent business?
 One person said to another,
 You understand, brother, nowadays people are all becoming inhuman!
 Yet... one honest, therefore lonely, helpless, joyless person shouted from somewhere,
 Alas, this poor soul is falling victim to wrong judgment...!
 What are you doing? You're misunderstanding, making mistakes!
 Stop! Stop before it's too late!
 No one listened. Perhaps didn't understand either. In a society of hypocrites, the honest person's language becomes incomprehensible.
  
 Twilight floats in blood, invitation of canopy in the west, clouds in the south laugh mockingly,
 seeing evening, jackals don't call from fear of humans,
 public anger fragile as dry leaves
 flies in gusts of wind,
 on the branches of the ashvattha tree, older than a centenarian crone, the endless chatter of hundreds of unknown birds can be heard.
  
 The poet lifted his eyes from the neat row of his torn-off fingernails
 to the united dense procession of the ungrateful and hypocritical,
 relying somehow on deceptive memory, he thought,
 I took up the pen for these people too!
 The call of approaching blood from the compassion of suffering letters
 placed the poet gently in the lap of safe childhood,
 all the foolish beliefs of boyhood—
 like this: one must love people, losing faith in humanity is sin, and what else...
 floated up one by one
 in the unworried, fearless, unburdened twilight at the end of weary days.
 He saw across the thickening darkness at humanity's end
 the festival of fireflies—though quite useless, just as before!
  
 In today's wind the boat of untruth unfurls its sails
 toward whichever sea beckons. Let it be the price of wrong calculations, still it runs and runs!
 Even the bravest sailor today doesn't steer his ship on the right course.
 The poet, about to cry, didn't let tears fall,
 every devoted tree in the vast expanse
 of the old forest is also a traitor today!
 The poet's faithful, devoted 'grateful' reader came forward first
 and struck the bell of time seven consecutive times, dong dong.
  
 Immediately, multiplied by the six passions, six hundred or six thousand
 mute, black, blind, powerless, yet enthusiastic for national salvation, young men
 raised small sharp countless swords,
 some with defiant fingers poised on triggers.
 All the poet's old readers, today turned hunters, revel in the dance of death.
 Understanding or not understanding, the well-wishers shouted in unison,
 Catch the poet! Kill him! Burn him!
 Why, no one knows.
 Popular injustice is more enchanting than justice, so it attracts more!
  
 The poet's lips trembled.
 He whispered uncertainly,
 Let humanity live!
 Let the human mind be freed!
 I swear, I don't want immortality, I only want to live! Will you let me live a little?
 The poet looked into that ocean of people, searching for at least one grateful person,
 whom his poetry had companioned through time and adversity like a faithful friend;
 hoping not for mercy, but for a little sympathy and a few compassionate words.
 The poet found no one.
 Now the poet's only friend is the poet himself.
 The poet again prayed silently for everyone,
 May life's melody play for eternity!
 May everyone's collective and individual life be beautiful!
 May everyone have a life of good sense!
  
 They came toward the poet one by one.
 The first one knocked the poet down with a fierce kick;
 the poet stood up—as everyone does!
 In the poet's calm eyes, no complaint, just a trace of peaceful laughter.
 The second came and with skilled trigger made a hole right through his chest.
 The poet still laughed like one without feeling, ha ha!
 The third one's unerring blade pierced his throat through and through.
 The poet said without doubt,
 I will live on!
 ...False words, the poet's heart also lies.
 The fourth one's stick-blow shattered and split open his forehead.
 (The poet remembered, in childhood mother would say, you see, my son will have a royal forehead!)
 The fifth leaped onto the poet's jaw and pulled out all his teeth.
 How easily even a harmless person can pull out another's teeth—in 'time's just demand'!
 The sixth cut off each finger of the poet's right hand one by one as quickly as possible!
 The poet tried to remember one last time,
 those fingers had gifted that poem which had taught the sixth person to live, many many times!
 The seventh came and went back disappointed. "Damn! Finished? Nothing left!" The pain of not being able to participate in the murder festival is great!
  
 No more to go! Now the poet began falling to the ground, swaying!
 Commotion broke out in the crowd! All around, what a victory celebration!
 They ran to play Holi in the poet's blood-flood!
 In that group was the perfect gentleman too, that is, the one you know as a gentleman!
 No sound of joy or sorrow reached the poet's ears,
 as soon as the poet's blood, brain, marrow scattered on the ground
 the sky began to weep in terrible grief or intense jubilation.
 Before the last moment of oxygen-bath
 the poet's pair of lips
 moved half a time
 or didn't move,
 no one even bothered to notice.
 Death's festival is more splendid than any birth festival.
  
 The unknown truth is, the poet's last moment passed gloriously despite everything.
 Looking at the severed hand, scattered brain and torn throat lying on the ground, he smiled gently and said,
 My hand, brain, throat... no one could bind them anymore.
 No regret. What I received was deserved!
 I remain 'I' as I am, you remain 'you' as you are.
 At least thank you for not becoming ungrammatical humans.
  
 Year turned to year.
 People's various needs and demands grew with time's necessity.
 The forgetful masses raised their voices demanding unattained rights:
 We want poetry, we want poetry! Where's the poet? Where's the poet? Catch him, bring him bound! Right now! Right now we need him!
 Someone needs silence, someone needs clamor.
 Someone needs life, someone needs death.
 Someone needs courage, someone needs fear.
 Someone needs laughter, someone needs tears.
 Someone doesn't even know what they need.
 But everyone needs a few handfuls of poetry. This very moment! Very urgent!
 Free poetry. Free poetry has good value.
 Poetry is needed to live!
  
 Call the poet! Bang on the poet's door, wake him up! Why so much sleep at this odd hour?
 A prostitute at least gets time to change clothes, the poet doesn't even get that. Such is the fate of being born a poet!
 With broken spine, dead lungs, stopped heart, rusted brain, faithless heart, weak sight, the poet tries to write again—desperately.
 The war between finger and pen continues, yet the white paper doesn't change color.
  
 When the poet leaves, poetry goes with him—no one understands before losing it.
 We never learned to be grateful—we kill the poet whenever we get the chance!
 We haven't even learned to be selfish—we kill poetry along with the poet without understanding!
  
 Yet postscript poet or poetry... is born anyway!
 Their demand to be written is strong.
 The poet's urge to write is stronger.
 So the poet pierces the coffin and awakens.
 Present initiation moves more than past teaching!
 Again the meditative-dreamer poet strides boldly toward the moment of being murdered again.
  
 (Written in the shadow, reflection, and sub-shadow of 'The Death of a Poet: Remembering Lorca' from Sunil Gangopadhyay's 'My Dream' (1970))

(I have intense emotions tied to this poem. What happened to the poet in this life has happened exactly the same way in my own life. Reading this poem will create in you the impression of what humans are essentially like, and humans are basically like that. This becomes felt bone-deep when you're in trouble. At that time you won't find any 'so-called trusted' person beside you; more importantly, you'll see the completely different face of those who were beside you in the guise of friends. Almost all humans either participate themselves in the festival of cruelty, or silently enjoy it. The addiction to seeing others trampled and tortured unites people. Having seen such faces of humans so clearly, people's praise or blame doesn't touch me much. I've understood that we're mainly busy with unnecessary people.)