Poems :-

We who have walked deserted stubble fields on a December evening,

Who have seen over the field's edge a soft river woman scattering
Her fog flowers-they all are like some village girls of old-
We who have seen in darkness the akanda tree, the dhundul plant
Filled with fireflies, the moon standing quietly at the head of
An already harvested field-she has no yearning for that harvest;

We who have lived in the darkness of a long winter's night, who have
Heard wings flutter on a thatched roof in captivating night-
The smell of an ancient owl, now lost again in the darkness!
Who have understood the beauty of a winter's night-wings buoyed up
over
Fields brimming with deep joy, herons calling from aswattha tree
limbs;
We who have understood all this secret magic of life;

We who have seen wild geese escape injury from a hunter's bullet
And fly away into the horizon's gentle blue moonlight;
We who have placed a loving hand upon the sheaves of paddy;
Like the evening crows, we who returned home full of desire;
Smell of a baby's breath, grass, sunlight, a kingfisher, stars, sky-
We who were aware of these as we came and went throughout the year;

Who have seen green leaves turn yellow in the November darkness,
Light and bulabuli birds frolicking in the windows of a cashew tree,
A mouse rubbing chaff over his silklike fur on a wintry night,
Waves forming in gray odors of rice and pouring down twice daily
Upon eyes of lonely fish, a duck in evening's darkness on the bank of
a Pond
Catching scent of sleep-the touch of a womanly hand carries him off,

A golden hawk calling from the window of a minaretlike cloud,

Beneath a wicker vine a sparrow's eggs appearing so hard,
A river ever smearing its banks with fragrance of soft water,
Roof thatching casting shadows in deep night upon a moonlit
courtyard,
Smell of crickets in the green wind of April's outlying fields,
Thick juice oozing with heavy desire into bluish custard apples' breasts;

We who have seen the red fruit fallen beneath the thick banyan,
The crowds of deserted fields seeing their faces in the river,
However blue the skies, yet finding one that is even bluer;
Who upon the paths have seen soft eyes casting their glow on the earth;
We who have seen evening each day flow over rows of betel nut trees,
The dawn appear every day simple and green like a sheaf of paddy;

We who have understood after many a day, month, season gone by

That daughter of the earth who came near and in the darkness spoke of
Rivers; we who have understood there is another light within
The fields, ghats, paths: its afternoon grayness is in our bodies-
As we let go our seeing hands, that light remains constant:
Kankabati of the earth floats there and attains a body of pale incense.

Before death what more do we wish to understand? Do I not know that

The face of gray death awakes like a wall at the head of all prostrate
Reddened desires. once there was a dream in this world-there was
gold
That attained silent peace, as though by some magician's need.
What more do we wish to understand? Haven't we heard the call of
wings
As the sun faded? Haven't we seen the crow fly off into fields of
fog!
Last night was thick with wind, a time of countless stars.
All night long, a vast wind played within my mosquito net.
At times that net swelled like a monsoon sea's belly.
Tearing loose from the bed every once in a while
It would try to fly to the stars.
Now and then it seemed to me-perhaps while half asleep-that there
was no mosquito net over my head at all,
As it soared like a white heron upon a sea of blue wind, skirting the
hip of the star Swati!
Last night was such a marvelous night.

All the dead stars awoke last night-there wasn't the least little space
in the sky.
I saw the gray faces of all the world's beloved dead in those stars.
In the dark of night, in aswattha treetops, those stars glittered like a
lusty hawk's dewy eyes.
The huge sky gleamed in the moonlit night like a shining cheetah stole
upon the shoulders of Babylon's queen.
Last night was such an amazing night.

Those stars in the bosom of the sky that died thousands of years ago,
They, too, brought with them through the window last night countless,
dead skies.
Those stunning women I saw die in Assyria, Egypt, Vidisa,
Seemed last night to stand shoulder to shoulder, javelin in hand, in far-
off mist and fog at the sky's horizon:
To trample death under foot?
To proclaim full victory for life?
To excite the sullen, frightful stupor of love?
I was overwhelmed-overcome,
As though torn by last night's compelling blue tyranny.
on the sky's endless, expansive wings
The earth, like some insect, was swept away last night.
>From the sky's bosom came the lofty winds
Sighing through my window,
Like so very many zebras of a verdant land, startled by the lion's roar.

My heart filled with the scent of a vast green grassy veldt,

With horizon-flooding blazing sunlight scent,
With the restless, massive, vibrant, woolly outburst of darkness,
Like growls of an aroused tigress,
With life's untamable blue intoxication!

My heart tore free from the earth and flew,

Flew up like a drunken balloon into an ocean of blue wind,
To the mast of some distant constellation, scattering stars as it flapped
away like some mischievous vulture.

I shall return to this Bengal, to the Dhansiri’s bank:

Perhaps not as a man, but mayna or fishing-kite;
Or dawn crow, floating on the mist’s bosom to alight
In the shade of this jackfruit tree, in this autumn harvest-land.

Or may be a duck- a young girl’s bells on my red feet,

Drifting on kalmi-scented waters all the day:
For love of Bengal’s rivers, fields, crops, I’ll come this way
To this green shore of Bengal, drenched by Jalangi’s waves
Perhaps you’ll see a glass-fly ride the evening breeze,
Or hear a barn owl call from the silk-cotton tree;
A little child toss rice-grains on the courtyard grass,
Or a boy on the Rupsa’s turgid stream steer a dinghy
With torn white sail - white egrets swimming through red clouds
To their home in the dark.
You will find me among their crowd.