What happens when your desire Lies in being alive?

Lacerating the unfortified,/ Picking at the flesh for bad blood to find

Bury your feet where its green And when the air is thin you will see 

She’s as real as my meandering/ As tangible as tinkering.

Once a homebody, nestled in its embrace. Now lost, a wanderer in a boundless space.

Seven feet of mud swept water, /Bodies under rubble.

She doesn’t need an alarm For the last hour of the night.

Her Kohl-rimmed eyes, dangling earrings,/ The chiffon scarf, the satin silk shirt

It said, my body was no longer needed. / “This is the age of freedom. Let me go, and explore.”

We’re still alive/ but they wanted to die a natural death

Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags

Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook

This is a translation by Md. Abu Zafor of Bimal Guha’s “Kalo Biral” from the collection ‘E Kon Matal Nritya' (first published in 2022).

Time to set sail for a new cruise, oh dear voyager Sindbad!

Time, heavy as a thousand suns combined,/ Bends mothers, smaller than the ones they bore,

What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight

Your tea in the kettle, piping hot water/ No sugar, so that you can really taste the tea on your tongue

This universe’s heart is hollow now for humanity has died inside it.

Spacious, shiny, new roads are built in my city to rent them for raw-markets

The hush of dawn and the whispered breeze,/ that caresses nature's resting face