The father who fears identifying the corpse of his dead child,
I despise him.
The brother who is still unperturbed—without shame,
I despise him.
The teacher, intellectual, poet, or professional
Who does not ask for avenging these deaths in public,
I despise him.
Eight lifeless bodies
Lie across my consciousness,
I am losing my sanity.
Eight pairs of probing eyes stare at me in my sleep,
I wake up screaming
They are calling me, during odd hours, in odd places, all the time,
I will become a madman
I will kill myself
I will do whatever I want to.
This is the time to write poetry
On pamphlets, walls, and stencils
Using blood, tear, and bones in a collage,
This is the time when poetry can be written
With the fiercest pain of tattered face,
Facing terror yet gazing still
At the scorching headlight of a police-van.
This is the time when poetry can be thrown
At the .38 and in spite of everything that the assassin carries,
This is the time when poetry can be read.
In the stone-cold lock-up room
Shaking the putrefied light during post-mortem
In the court controlled by the murderer
In the school of lies and un-education
Within the state machinery of oppression and terror
On the chest of civilian-military authorities,
Let the protest of poetry reverberate
Let the poets of the country remain prepared like Lorca
Let them be prepared to get killed, strangled, disappear—like corpses
To be perforated by a string of sten gun bullets
Yet, they need to surround the city of poetry with the villages of poems.
This valley of death is no country of mine
This rostrum of executioners is no country of mine
This extended crematorium is no country of mine
This blood-bathed slaughterhouse is no country of mine.
I will return to get my country back
In my heart, I will carry the kash, wet with dew,
The flutter of fireflies throughout my body,
The crop of my heart from jhums on hills,
Fairytales with flowers, women, and rivers.
I will name the stars after the martyrs as I wish
I will beckon that gust of wind, with the shadow of sunlight on the lake that looks like the eye of a fish,
Love—even him, who, from his birth, has remained a lightyear away—
I will call him too, on this festival of revolution.
I refuse to be interrogated day and night under the light of a 1000-watt bulb
I refuse to sleep on a slab of ice with needles piercing my nails
I refuse to be hung from the ceiling, upside-down, with my nose bleeding profusely
I refuse to be crushed by boots, to bear scars from hot iron pincers
I refuse to be whipped into submission, to have sudden alcohol poured over my wounds
I refuse to be naked, electrocuted, perversely tortured
I refuse to be beaten to death, to be shot point blank at head.
Poetry refuses to acknowledge any obstacle
Poetry is armed, free, fearless
Look, Mayakovsky, Hikmet, Neruda, Aragon, Eluard!
We haven’t let your poetry down
A new epic is being composed across the country
Ornamented by the rhythms of guerrilla warfare.
Let the drums beat
In the hamlet that looks like a coral island
On the blood-soaked indigo fields,
For the poisoned river drenched with death
For the sun blinded by a sharp, fiercely violent arrowhead—
Bhalla! We would reclaim our shore with your lancets and spears
With guns and kukris and blood-eyed tribal totems
And with a lot of courage,
So much courage that even fear would lose its own fear.
I am no longer afraid of cranes, bulldozers, and convoys
I do not fear the dynamo, turbine, lathe, or engine,
The desolate metal hammer shining like a diamond in the methane-black darkness of a collapsed coal mine
No longer strikes fear in me, it doesn’t,
For the thousand hands raised against the bleak skies of docks-mills-furnaces
The pale face of fear seems unrecognizable.
When I have come to know that death is nothing but love
If I am killed,
I will spread like a thousand flames,
I am indestructible
Every year I will return with the spring,
I am indestructible—
I will live in joy and grief, through the lives of my children,
As long as this country lasts,
I will remain.
The death which makes even winter nights boil with rage
Call forth that day, that war, that death
When the Seventh Fleet will be stalled by seven boats.
Let the blowing of the horn declare war
When the wind is drunk with the smell of blood,
Let poetry be lighted and the ground explode
When villages, boats, towns, and temples
From the Terai to the Sundarbans
Are dry and inflammable after a night’s cry,
When the land of my country and the sludge of slaughter have become the same,
Then why is there dilemma anymore?
What is there to doubt?
What is terror?
I can feel those eight bodies,
Whispering in the darkness of eclipse—where to stand guard
I can hear tens of thousands of stars across galactic oceans, in their voices,
The legacy of travelling from one world to another.
Let the burning torch of poetry,
Let the molotov cocktail of poetry,
Let the toluene flame of poetry,
Get immersed in this hope of fire.
First Published as ‘Ei Desh, Ei Shomoy’ (‘This Country, These Times’) in 1972. Translated from the original bangla poem, ‘Ei Mrityu Upotyoka Aamar Desh Na’.
Lokayata 