Bandyopadhyay, Pranab (ed.);
Hundred Indian Poets: An Anthology of Modern Poetry
Oxford India / IBH 1977, 112 pages [08mar coll-st]
topics: | poetry | india | anthology | english
I, too, now am barren as you are. No shores, no seeds, no home or habitation. Just commotion, waves. And heaving winds. A hunger. And horizons filled with gusty lamentation, As if the one you loved in a past existence, for ever yours, was lost to you for ever. Since then, no rest. But sheer turbulence of vain protests, appeals. An anguished, endless flood, voice of separation's unutterable cry. Whirlpools, ice-floes, drowned men's skeletons, shark's tooth, rent flesh, the typhoon's crazy brew, agony of absence always felt anew -- substance of you is this, your salt, your bitter blood. I, too, now am destitute like you. translated from Bengali by poet, p.21
My love, do you remember our first night, made unforgettable by the light footfall of desire in the dark of our hearts, the palpitating music, the drunken revel of the uninhibited ones? Do you remember, love, the fevered festivity, sweating palms, the wonder of the eyes, the sudden shamelessness of uncertain advantages, the multiple promises in your arms? That crystal feeling is lost today in dispute, our lingering kisses turned an empty gesture ; guided by an inconstant will-o-the-wisp my helpless youth is now a sinking barge. Yet the hope dies hard that frugal providence will not let pass such prodigal extravagance. translated from Bengali, Manish Nandy, p. 17
From the debris of house-wrecks pick up my broken face your bride's face changed a little with the years. I shall not remember the betrayed honeymoon; we are both such cynics you and I. If loving me was hard then it's harder now but love me one day for a lark love the sixty-seven kilogrammes of aging flesh love the damaged liver, the heart and its ischemia, yes, love me one day just for a lark show me how our life would have been if only you had loved... (from her collection My Story, p.44)
Includes Jibanananda Das' Banalata Sen, one of the classics of post-Tagore Bengali poetry. But the translation included (by Shyamosree Devi) is not quite there: I am a weary wanderer on life's many roads passing in darkness from Ceylonnese waters to the Malayan sea, in the shadows of Bimbisar and Ashoka, lost in the deeper darkness of the city of Vidharbha a lost soul, O foam-lost, lost in life's sea, I found peace for a moment with Banalata Sen of Nature I am afraid the Bengali cadence and dynamism is quite "lost" in this English version. Even the following version, from the poet himself, isn't that much cleaner though. Long have I been a wanderer of this world, Many a night, My route lay across the sea of Ceylon somewhat winding to The seas of Malaya I was in the dim world of Bimbisar and Asok, and further off In the mistiness of Vidarbha. At moments when life was too much a sea of sounds, I had Banalata Sen of Natore and her wisdom. Another famous Bengali poem, kANDArI hushiyAr, by Kazi Najrul Islam, is also poorly translated.
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