From their
blood spring the strings of the kites
And sail
towards the big streams of wind
Cotton, they
bring
With themselves
while coming into the world.
Sunshine –
Be it gliding
high like an eagle
Or hanging
very close like a fruit;
Like an effervescent
lemon, time
Always sprinkles
its juice on their tongue.
Hurricanes come
and pass away
Torrential rains
come and fade out
Days of
traumatic heat-wave come and disappear
But they
persistently wait
For the sun
to be mellow
That the sun
would be mellow, oh when
The sun
would be mellow and unfold
For the days
to be simple
Oh when the days
would be so simple
That the
slender world of kites and string
A tender
world of children and birds
May begin.
2
The blackest
night of ‘Bhadon’ are over
The darkest
clouds of ‘Bhadon’ have gone
The heaviest
showers of ‘Bhadon’
Bending the masts,
resounding the ‘nagaras’
Beating the
drums – heaviest showers
Swinging the
walls and the ponds
Extinguishing
the lanterns and the candles
In such a
darkness thence
Only grandmas
tell
Their longest
tales
To the
children just awakened by thunders
And to those
frightened birds
Who have
just come here
Fleeing from
the bushes adrift in the flood
And groping
with their wet feathers and beaks
Have somehow
found a big dry hole in the wall!
The birds
can remain alive for a long time
If you stop
killing them.
Children can
remain alive for a long time
If you stop
killing them.
By hunger
By epidemic
By floods
and by bullets
You kill
them.
You child-slaughterers!
Will be
driven out of this world one day.
Rulers who
kill children!
Beware!
One day you
will be thrown on ice
Where you
will die rotting away
And your
guns also will rot away.
3
Heaviest showers
are over: ‘Bhadon’ has gone.
Morning came.
Morning, red
like the eyes of a rabbit.
Autumn came.
Crossing the bridges
Speeding on
its new shining bicycle
Ringing the
bell aloud
Calling with
dazzling gestures
The bunch of
children who are to fly kites
Calling
With dazzling
gestures and making the sky
Smooth so
that the kite may sail upwards –
The lightest
and colourful thing of this world may sail
The thinnest
paper may sail
The slender-most
strip of bamboo may sail
That such a
tender world of whistles, of shouts
And of
butterflies
May begin.
Cotton they
bring while coming into this world
The revolving
earth comes to their restless feet
When they
run wildly
Making even
the roofs soft
Drumming the
heavens like ‘Mridang’
When springing
with the elastic impulse of a branch
They come
near the perilous edge of the roofs
Then
They are
saved from falling
By the music
of their own thrilled bodies
Only music
saves them from falling
The pulsating
heights of the kite
Hold them
Only by a
thread.
They also
fly along with the kites
Through their
pores.
If sometimes
they fall from the perilous edges of the roofs
And live,
then
Even more
fearlessly they come
In front of
the golden sun
The earth
revolving even faster
Comes to their
restless feet.
_________________________
Translated by Roma Prakash and Bidyut Pal
(in 1990s)
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