Poetry- A Translation of Jibonanondo Das's Poem Kobita

     We were flowing  along this murky wave of time 

without getting lost in an anonymity of pulsating blood 

because in our bones lies an unstained jubilation.

Oh sky! once you were of the brook of dawn;

but now you are one with the silent seas of the night.

The birds of dawn thus sing with no delusion

No futility can be found in the spirits of the fireflies

The weary renunciant wandering on the betrayed thoroughfares with his monkey and goat

 find answers in the comforting immobile darkness of the water held in his palms.

On the other shore, devoid of light;

the bat sets out for his swim in air

the immortality of the vast open fields reveal itself with blooming parochial grass;

The golden-green eyes reveal the hunger of the cicada couple

adjacent to the hopeless weeds along the bricks of the most dilapidated grave.

A bat invites us to the flow excellent glow of the full moon,

as if to entice us to conquer the horizon as far as it stretches

Oh Sky! Oh Sky!

You were once like the silent seas of polar darkness

Now you are made of light like the stream of dawn.