Or the right hand of a professional murderer
Or the leather gloves of a detective
Or a fixed spot on the enemy’s binoculars?
Whatever it be – I cannot call it just a day.
It’s a very old place
Where I am writing
Here, even today, more of tobacco is used in place of words.
The sky here is just pig-high,
The tongue is the least in use
The eyes are the least in use
The ears are the least in use
Only teeth and stomach is here
And hands buried in soil
Man is nowhere
There is just a blue hollow
Which asks for food inly
From one heavy rain to the other.
Is this woman my mother, or a five feet iron rod
On which hang two dry breads
Like dead birds
There is not even a hair’s difference now
Between my daughter and my strike
Whereas the constitution, on its conditions,
Keeps breaking my strike and my daughter.
After this sudden election
Do I have to stop thinking about dynamite?
Can I, on this 20th April of 1972
Live with my children like a father,
Like an inkpot, like a ball,
Can I live with my children
Like a field full of grass?
Even if they give me entry into their poems,
They blindfold me, use me and then
Leave me beyond the border.
They never let me reach the capital
I am confined before I can reach the district town.
It wasn’t the government
But the cheapest cigarette of this country
Which stood by me.
Near my sister’s feet, like blue hedges
My childhood had flowered’
The Daroga’s buffalo grazed it.
If a Daroga has the right to shoot, to save humanity
Why not I?
The land on which I am writing,
The land on which I walk,
The land on which I plough,
The land in which I sow seeds,
The land from where I extract grains
And carry till the godowns –
Do I have the right to shoot for this land,
Or those bastard landlords, who have turned this whole country into a
Creditor’s dog?
This isn’t poetry
This is the realisation to shoot
Which all the pen-workers are getting
From all the plough workers.
___________________________________________
Translated by Roma Prakash
(In 1990s)
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