Category: Poetry of Jibananda Das

I have seen the dark and yet there is another, greater dark
I have known death and yet there is another death awaiting
Behind is a whole history existing, but not accessible yet
Is that grand narrative—one to whom the plot has another meaning;
And to whom the sea sings another tune, and there is a different stirring
Of the heart and of issues—and where the mind is illumined uniquely.
  
Fire, wind, water—primeval gods burst out laughing
Spent—once spent—does one end up as pork?
Ha! Ha! I burst out laughing—
It was as if amidst the loud laughter,
The carcass of a huge whale had suddenly surfaced in a dark ocean
Making the entire earth become as overpowering as a whale carcass’s stench.

 I had thought humans would progress steadily in history’s lap;
Instead of playing with machines they had mastered
They would mature from accumulated successes.
And yet it is the machine that has become a power to reckon with
It is Love that has been punctured and power that has prospered
With the nuclear bomb—was the increase in knowledge
Supposed to result in such a split? 
 
The wisdom that we had gathered over time in life
Just isn’t there—what we have is stasis—senility;
Surrounded by all sorts of fears, we only have
Fatigue and depression. We’ve become self-centered
And have enclosed ourselves in shells. We’re too scared 
To break them and avoid unclean sexual exchanges
Carried out in the dark. Oceanic, airy, sunlight soaked,
Blood-drenched, death-touched words come and dance
Like frightening witches—we are frightened---hide in caves—
We would rather disappear—dissolve—disappear in Brahma’s
Word. Our two thousand years of learning is thus much!
      
 
We keep ourselves busy with commissions—build bases—love the city
                                         and the port’s bustle
The grass below our boots we consider only grass—nothing else alas—
we’ve made the motorcar our prized possession
Why do wagtails dance then—fingas and bulbulis flit from forest to forest?