Beyond Land and Time

All Daylong Trams and Buses

(Shārādin Trām Bās)

Translated by Fakrul Alam

All daylong trams and buses—cry of street vendors—lepers on footpaths

Carts driven by weary buffalos—busyness of bazaars—bustle of slums.

I turned away that shell-garlanded girl-child who had come

to make her home in my heart;

I sent her back from the city to some remote country road.

When was it that I, prince-like, had been exiled from that remote country road?

Where is the fragrance of the bean plant? the song of the thrush?

has the youth in me died?

The afternoon thickens with moist clouds—the kite cries—do you know where—

where is Hiramon?

That shell-garlanded girl-child had come to make her home

in my heart!

I like to devote time to my family; like everyone else I like to build a home;

I go to port, make a living—play at being husband and father;

I rub the smell of the crowd on my shoulders day after day; sleep in the dark,

In daylight I roam around tentatively; imperceptively, I have got stuck in domestic chores—

Leaving all this, O heart, fly to the grey late autumnal landscape,

Where ravens build nests on banyan trees—where fruits drop off like colourful feathers

Onto dry leaves; where evening storks waft conch-white wings;

Where passion-red clouds show the way to the shrine

of some martyr of love for three hundred years—

Where shaliks take off from country roads for the horizon

with straws in their beaks,

And where the spirit of that shell-garlanded girl-child blazons forth

the lone star in the wind-filled field . . .

The day I leave this world—O shell-garlanded one—

Make sure that you scatter endless stars in the sky,

What could be more profound than a few lonely stars

surrounding the level field of darkness—

What could be more appealing, shell-garlanded one—

And make my bed on that level land

That lush grass-green picturesque land

Close to the smell of the Dhanshiri river water

In this Bengal.