Beyond Land and Time

To Her Steady Lover

(Tār Sthir Prєmiker Nikôt)

Translated by Faizul Latif Chowdhury

There is no meaning in living—I don’t say this.

There is meaning for some, may be for all—may be a perfect meaning.

Yet I hear the white sound of wind-driven birds

In the water of the distant seas

beneath the burning summer sun.

The candle burns slowly, very slowly, on my table;

The books of intellect are more still—unwavering— lost in meditation;

Yet when you go out on to the streets

or even while sitting by the window side

Will you sense the frenzied dance of violent seas;

Right beside that a book of your cheeks; no more like a lantern,

Perhaps like a conch-shell lying on the beach as if ocean’s father

It is also a music by its own merit—like Nature:

caustic—lovable—finally like the most favourite entity.

So I get the taste of expansive wind in the airing

of maddening grievances;

Otherwise in the mind’s forest the python coils up around the doe:

I feel the pitiable hint of a life like that in the Sceptre of protest.

Some glacier-cold still flock of Cormorants will realize my words;

When the electric-compass of life will cease

They will eat up snow-grey sleep like polar seas in endless grasp.