You and you will remain well—
perhaps like the Taj Mahal, or else
in ways even more beautiful.
Why does everything happen this way?
Sometimes I think I understand nothing at all…
Yet I forget everything—
what the sea is like, how fierce the wind,
how true the blue of sky,
how much joy is steeped in moonlight,
how many evenings hide in fennel groves,
how much Behula's flute knows of burning,
these things I haven't known for ages.
Actually I never walked alongside truth,
you'll find me in brothels in the deep of night!
Why?
Don't people become pure lies?
They do! Rather
people never become pure truth.
Some secret ugliness remains hidden in shadow!
. . . remains, doesn't it!
When virtuous women walk deep in the Ram-lila,
do you write blue prose perhaps?
Into tales of joy you slowly pour handfuls of sorrow…
who are you really?
A burnt woman
walking along the Jalangi's shore!
Not all joys are the same,
perhaps, woman, you suffered from a famine of happiness,
or I had too much luxurious poverty,
only a fire-daughter silently said something and left!
After that,
golden one, how well are you?
I know blue people live in your secret chambers too.
I am a lifelong foolish traveler,
why should that house then be mine!
If someday we suddenly meet on the road,
face to face what will I say, gazing silently?
. . . Come, let there be a shower of rain!
For some reason I feel like returning now.
The sky is dark, sun and moon both missing;
only that girl keeps singing…
ruined bee, don't come to this neighborhood anymore.
Tell me, do you know the Taj Mahal?
How strange! People are enriched by people's deaths!
Exactly how much death can you call the Taj Mahal?
Culture doesn't understand, yet stories of greatness fill its brain!
Never mind, I was speaking of you.
You are my beloved beautiful curl-darkness,
a cluster of melody flows through its depths,
golden splendor in maroon light.
Blue, some people in this world are very tender,
it pains me greatly
to accept their breaking apart.
I'm taking leave from life's time;
it seems the destination isn't far anymore.
Let you and your times remain beautiful.
Like reptiles in aquatic bodies,
I become that impersonal twilight-person;
perhaps
I'll walk silently past you, and you just won't recognize me.
You are young-green, eternally beautiful,
successful on every axis of life.
Good girl, stay well.
May your life be like a vast, beautiful full moon.
Someone else sitting will extract that moon's essence bit by bit,
or else remain a little sorrow-blue person.
If you stay well, the world will stay well too,
and . . .
so will I.
Sripur
The seventeenth of Shrabon
Should I write the date too?
No, let it be…