Sengupta, Mallika;
Kathamanabi: her voice and other poems
Bhashanagar, Kolkata 2005
topics: | poetry | bengali | translation | bi-lingual
I am "her" voice, recounting her tales, from the vedic age to the 21st century. The fire that has remained stifled in the ashes of history, smothered by time and age, I am that woman -- I speak of her. I read tears, I write fire, I live in infamy and consume its ashes. I endure violence, and still breathe fire. I live as long as this fire burns within me. [drop "this"? the?; within -> in?] It is hard to endure the scorching heat of the flame that my words kindle...
Man, I've never raised my hands against you. When you first parted my hair to put the blood-mark, That day was I wounded, but I didn't say a word. On parched earth, no flowers bloom, no peacocks spread their tails But we've always dug the same dunes for your water. Lifting our sons, we've seen glow-worms, pointed out Orion. We know the earth's a woman; the sky first man: Why then have you bound my arms with chains? Nor let me see the sky for a thousand years? Don't insult the earth on which you stand. Man, I've never raised my hands against you. - tr. Carolyne Wright and Paramita Banerjee
the open wavy tresses of my hair radiated into the sky, making storm clouds my green patterned starch-cotton skin crept up, creating the lliana of forests the hum of melody from my throat stolen, turned into cuckoo song the babbling nonsense of my voice became the lingua franca of vast populaces my tired sweat mingled with the smell of my period creating the moist aroma of dry earth hit by rain nurtured by the tendrils of my hunger swaying-green ricefields came up to bathe me were the rivers born to dry me came sunshine in the heat of my anger, flintstones flashed into flickering fire. my fierce need for love created man in my body was grouted his seed-sceptre and then - in my womb was born this universe. (from Kathamanabi, translation Amit Mukerjee). Unfortunately the line "in the heat of my anger, flintstones", is missing in the book, one of many typos that take away from these translations.