Nabarun Poems

Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry Vol 2: Issue 1 Supplement
Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Poems
Traffic Signal
…the Policeman crucified at the crossroads
-- Mayakovsky
Not everyone can
Yet a few beyond death
Silently waits in the sky
Witnessing movements of stars
Like bewildered Traffic police
Did I ever know
Someone like him
Whose passage was never seen
Who had to leave
With hazy eyes
Before making sense of what is happening
I am unable to erase
Wondering about that
Dark water gust
I silently stare and wait
In the sky bewildered

www.sanglap-journal.in Editors: Sourit Bhattacharya and Arka Chattopadhyay 113

And through icy glasses gaze
Reddening, yellowing, greening moon…
Tampered Utensil
I could guess it is not too far from pilgrimage
As the number of lepers thicken
Meeting with politicians frequently
Help me guess
Assembly or Parliament election is near
Coins Scattered
On a piece of cloth
A blind old man singing
The cruelty of God
Name unasked
A politician I never met
But have seen
An ordinary tampered utensil in his kitchen
He is Lenin

Disabled Three
(1)
Raincoat of sky
Covered Diamond Harbor Road
That noon
A dumb boy and deaf girl
Crossing the road
That love was speechless
(2)
Touching with fingers
I felt all - face, nose, throat
Holding railings I realized it is jail
Cold weight of manacles around neck
Wind and rain came searching for me
Felt philosophy is brail
(3)
Undivided party worker’s leg
Was struck in firing inside Dumdum jail
Since then for both sides he uses crutches
A child watches and wonders
If this is what is stilt?

A Family Poem
Our family of three
Son Tathagata, wife Pranati and me
Three mirrors gazing back at us
In gloomy light like fish’s eyeball
The gleam that never sleeps
Perhaps a half shadow of luminance stays
Gas Oven burning in darkened home kitchen
Phosphorus touch on cheeks of sand and rock
Wiped again and again by murky sea
But it may not be my family
Perhaps my wife and son
Stripped and walked in Auschwitz Gas Chamber
Me a tailor or cobbler half skilled
Shot at head by a bullet near icy pit
With infected chest I used to come up from mines of Natal or Spain
Laid upon wooden shelves they coughed as well
Smoky sunlight spreads
Hoofing incessantly the sun vomits blood
Sooty lungs in the moon

In every blowing wind last gasp of us
So many times my family got erased
At homeland
Diseases, Bullets , Hospital corridors, Malnutrition, Fear
Everywhere, in all places, every time we were
We could have been Nikolai Bukharin’s family
We could have been brass country Chilli’s three
It is so common to see
Someone who claims to be a writer, someone who teaches,
Someone who is a student mad for sports
Perhaps captivated in Leningrad, coffinless and starved,
From Stalingrad my last postcard
Reached destination where nothing remained but shell hole
Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen , Karaganda
- Somewhere falling flat on the face specs broken
Hated Hitler heart and soul
Yet no allegation against comrade Stalin
At Dresden, Warsaw, Prague
Our pianos, wall clocks, toys charred along with us
Perhaps just now we gathered at Chechnya for prayer
After a while Russian bombs shall descend from sky
At Vietnam, Japanese day, Iraq, Rwanda

Many many families of three
Disenfranchised of even a photograph
However apart from all these there are so many unnamed families
Those who collectively commit suicide
Or murdered for reasons unknown
Some families vacate rooms as well
Without prior information
Mirrors eroded of mercury are not mirrors any more
They turn transparent glass
In every blowing wind last gasp of us
Across countries and continents quiver, assassins’
Numbing Hypnosis
In this open eyed neon the executioner will arrive for sure
All three witnessing spider nets hugging constellations
Terrorized by absurd inexorable brutal meteors
Mediterranean assumes silence

Killing Fields
O God, if the killing fields change
Shall I surrender my head
Before sword delicate like hair?
God, haven’t you told
To bow down head
I am prohibited.
Type
choked sky crematorium
city’s blue funeral
mounting stairs of meaningless days
nighttime hollow cough, drunkard’s face
erupts cough and verses
words while floating
on the road
in drizzle typewriter verses wake up
blind typist sits in the dark
------------------------------------Translated by Samrat Sengupta

Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Poems
Self-advertisement (one)
I don’t want to be a paperback
Thrown away after you’ve read it,
Pages coming loose from their binding.
I don’t want to be an expensive hardback
Left to the care of soft dust and silverfish on a high shelf.
I don’t want to be either of these.
I want you to remember me like a rhyme you learnt in childhood
Or shouted aloud like a lawless handbill
I want you to accept me naturally
As you’ve learnt to accept grief.
Warning
On the other side of the Jirat bridge
The newly planted kadam trees, lacking intelligence
Grow by leaps and bounds.
Pruning’s going on in the sky
I saw a kite’s two wings on the street today.

Someone’s scrawling across the city
That the sun goes round the earth.
On the underground platform I wait for someone
In cold expectation.
Sounds, light: a travelling coffin
Rushes towards me.
Since everyone says that the city
Is altering its appearance at breakneck speed,
Listen, then.
Fasten your seat-belts tightly,
Put out your cigarettes.
What kind of city is this
That forgets its sparrows
That forgets its warriors, whores and poets
Where multi-storeyed crematoriums rise into the sky
Where dogs and trams are about to be banned

Where trees shut their eyes in fear
Where one can’t hear drumbeats any more
Where fake eunuchs dance in the newspapers everyday
Where one, licking his fingers to count banknotes, turns out to have no tongue
Where plastic bags can vote
Where writers burn out like cigarettes
Where students blind from birth are battered to death on blackboards
This city is dead
My last wish for it – a grenade.
Balloons
A man wearing blue safety-glasses is welding
At this, streaks of lightning decided to flash
A cat was startled out of sleep

A man pushes a huge block of ice
In the market, night-blind flies sit on the wires
From which light-bulbs hang. Dead fish don’t fear the cold.
A man is pulling along a garbage van
Full of flowers, bones, peelings, plastic bags, empty liquor bottles
The whole world is turning into a rubbish dump.
Those whose bombs blew a boy’s hands off
Have sent him two artificial ones
Those who lost their heads weren’t so lucky.
All that happens doesn’t find mention in literature
The whole of literature has taken possession of a void
In which, filled with sighs,
A few balloons try to float.
Last Wish
When I die
The house that I’ve built of words
Will collapse in tears
Not surprising
The mirror in the house will wipe me away
The walls won’t have my pictures on them
I never liked walls
The sky will be my wall then
And the birds will write my name on it
With chimney-smoke
Or the sky will be my writing-desk
The moon my cold paper-weight
And stars will be pricked into my dark velvet pin-cushion
I won’t remember myself and feel sad
My hand doesn’t tremble as I write this
But when I first held your hand
My hand trembled
Part passion, part shyness
My beautiful wife, my beloved
My memories will surround you
You needn’t cling on to them
Build a life for yourself
My memory will be your comrade
If you love someone
Give them these memories

Make him your comrade
But I’m leaving it all to you
I believe you won’t make a mistake
When you teach my son his letters
For the first time, teach him
To love people, sunlight, stars
He’ll be able to solve difficult problems
He’ll understand the algebra of revolution
Better than me
He’ll teach me to walk in a rally
On stony ground or on grass
Tell him about my faults
Let me not scold me
My dying isn’t such a great matter
I knew I wouldn’t live long
But my belief never wavered
Overcoming every death
Denying all darkness
Long live the revolution
May the revolution live forever

Something’s burning
In a corner, untimely, under the mattress, in the crematorium,
Something’s definitely burning
I can smell the smoke
Someone’s lit a cheap tobacco twist
Someone’s squatting over a clay stove, blowing on the coals
Someone’s put a shrivelled baby
Dead of enteritis, on a funeral pyre
Flaming birds tumble from the sky
Somewhere, a gas cylinder has exploded
There’s a fire in a coalmine, in a fireworks factory
Something is burning
All four corners have caught fire
The burning mosquito net will descend on you as you sleep
The stars burn, the spacecraft with its crew is on fire
Entrails, gut are afire with hunger
The youth’s afire with love
The body of desire burns, chaff, cotton soaked in machine oil
Something’s definitely burning
You’re hit by a blast of heat
Buildings, moral values, huge portrait hanging somewhere

Promises, television, rare books
I’m rummaging through everything to find
What’s burning, where
What’s causing the blisters on my hands
Something’s burning, something’s caught fire
Burning quietly, burning in silence
But if a storm comes it’ll suddenly burst into flame
I’m telling you, something’s burning
Fire engine, umbilical cavity, sun
In front of everyone, right before your eyes,
Amidst all the people
Homeland!
Tram
I too am dying out from Calcutta, tram.
Written off because I’m too slow, obstinate, unprofitable:
Dark when untouched by electricity,
I too become night-blind, stupid:
Like a beached dolphin, nose down, motionless.
No one will put up with these old crocks any more;
Now it’s all fast food, debentures, shares, smart money.
Better for both of us to get out of it all,

Isn’t that so, tram?
No one will take you on the second Hooghly Bridge, tram.
No one will take you to Salt Lake, to the Taj Bengal,
To the marshes of Greater Calcutta, the reckless curves of the Bypass.
Does Madonna’s wild tempo ever
Make its way into a sonorous alap or jod?
Many years from now, indeed,
Your lights slipping away at night on the Maidan
While here and there, strung around temple or church,
Bells ring out a message;
Each ticket like a page of poetry,
The conductor-librarian,
The ancient driver –
all this will become antique Egypt,
The vanquished will be lost in the depths.
Yet, tram, with you
the protest march held step;
And sitting in your second class carriage
the poet of rallies
Sang untunefully,
songs of revolt and freedom.

With your three eyes and rain-soaked lights you were
the unearthly transport of lovers.
I too am being written off in Calcutta, tram.
I too from networks overhead
visible or invisible, draw no dreams.
Tram, I too am being taken off
because I’m too slow, awkward, unprofitable.
In the end, tram, the people of Calcutta
Will lack the word ‘outline’;
Nothing but set hymns; no one
will so much as sing a song of rejection.
Like a patient refused entry at hospital after hospital,
Like an injured boxer or football player,
In hurt pride, insult, neglect,
scrapped by the profit principle,
We too are dying out from Calcutta, tram.
--------------------------------Translated by Supriya Chaudhuri

Nabarun Poems

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Nabarun Poems

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry Vol 2: Issue 1 Supplement

Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Poems

…the Policeman crucified at the crossroads

Not everyone can

Yet a few beyond death

Silently waits in the sky

Witnessing movements of stars

Like bewildered Traffic police

Did I ever know

Someone like him

Whose passage was never seen

Who had to leave

With hazy eyes

Before making sense of what is happening

Wondering about that

Dark water gust

I silently stare and wait

In the sky bewildered

And through icy glasses gaze

Reddening, yellowing, greening moon…

I could guess it is not too far from pilgrimage

As the number of lepers thicken

Meeting with politicians frequently

Assembly or Parliament election is near

A blind old man singing

The cruelty of God

A politician I never met

But have seen

An ordinary tampered utensil in his kitchen

www.sanglap-journal.in Editors: Sourit Bhattacharya and Arka Chattopadhyay 114

Covered Diamond Harbor Road

A dumb boy and deaf girl

Crossing the road

That love was speechless

Touching with fingers

I felt all - face, nose, throat

Holding railings I realized it is jail

Cold weight of manacles around neck

Wind and rain came searching for me

Felt philosophy is brail

Undivided party worker’s leg

Was struck in firing inside Dumdum jail

Since then for both sides he uses crutches

A child watches and wonders

If this is what is stilt?

www.sanglap-journal.in Editors: Sourit Bhattacharya and Arka Chattopadhyay 115

Our family of three

Son Tathagata, wife Pranati and me

Three mirrors gazing back at us

In gloomy light like fish’s eyeball

The gleam that never sleeps

Perhaps a half shadow of luminance stays

Gas Oven burning in darkened home kitchen

Phosphorus touch on cheeks of sand and rock

Wiped again and again by murky sea

But it may not be my family

Perhaps my wife and son

Stripped and walked in Auschwitz Gas Chamber

Me a tailor or cobbler half skilled

Shot at head by a bullet near icy pit

With infected chest I used to come up from mines of Natal or Spain

Laid upon wooden shelves they coughed as well

Smoky sunlight spreads