Lost Poets Series| Hungryalist poets translated by Arunava Sinha| Part 3

We present to you English translations of poems by four lesser-known Hungry Generation poets. All the poems have been translated by the acclaimed translator, Arunava Sinha.

A painting by Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai

Source: Facebook page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

Utpal Kumar Basu

1) The Ogre 

The other day I met loneliness on Suren Banerjee Road

I said: here's a letter with your address I was about to post

Can you read minds? Which train did you take? Actually

It wasn't loneliness, but a silent comb bought on the pavement

With a woman's long hair still caught in its teeth

2)

So much suppressed rage hidden in the luggage, packed into the bedding

Without being caught during checking, slipping through the electronic scan 

They traverse the airport with ease, even avoiding the cordon of bodyguards

To confront a line of flabbergasted presidents and ministers and commissioners

And ask them, 'You, what the hell do you think you're doing?'

Soldiers fire their guns in vain, the daggers fight on their own

The rage remains invisible through it all

‎Bhaskar Chakrabarty

1) Things that happen

The days aren’t passing badly for the two of us

Though it’s true we haven’t been to the hills,

We haven’t been to the seaside, for three years now

And poverty, it’s no small annoyance

Constantly borrowing money and asking my sister for help

Still, one or two interesting things do happen 

Tonight for instance you exclaimed: there, it’s raining

We went up to the window

But it was only the sound of someone pissing on the roof next door

Or, the other night, when I was writing in the tiny room

With the light on - someone from the street said loudly

Go to sleep, motherfucker

2) Calcutta

I really shall run away from this Calcutta one day

There’s only the sound of breaking glass in Calcutta

The clang of knives and forks being flung on the floor

I shan’t stay here

Here women knit all day and all night beneath a strange clock.

‎Mahadeb Saha‬ 

1) 

There's a chance that you might come back

That's why the monsoon is here before spring

That's why all the flowers have bloomed early

And morning has arrived before morning.

2) 

You show me the distant sky

A faraway world

But I want to see life round the corner

You want to show me inaccessible stars

Far-flung seashores

An extended horizon, remote mountains

You want to show me, even further away, 

A romantic island, a tranquil lagoon

I only want to see this familiar lake

The river nearby

You want to show me the enormous universe,

To take me close to eternity

My vision is limited

My eyes cannot see so far away

I only want to see the regions

That border on life

Leave the distant stars alone, show me

The map of proximity

Show me the river bank, the vine on the roof

The front yard

Not distant mysteries, I only want to unravel.

Parthapratim Kanjilal

1) To you, Bhaskar-da: 

I have known you for thirty-nine years

Since 1963, when people were already aware

Of your pen. You never

Considered me a trusted friend or supportive writer

But you loved chatting over a cup of coffee

In a tiny tea-shop.

But I used to love you

As a companion, friend, writer. I never

Felt discomfort talking to you

Just as James Corbett was the ideal Vaishnav even without being Hindu

You too were the ideal Christian though a Chakraborty

In every word of yours the bishop’s silver candlestick

Lived and loved, in the sounds of your conversation. Oh and

The reason I wrote the letter

So THAT happened on July 23, 2005. I was thinking 

We spoke so much, but I never told you about your work

In my own words, Bhaskar-da

You are the brightest and whitest among Bangla writers

That was when Gautam Basu from Annapurna and Shubhakal

Came to me with a folder – we looked at you for the last time 

Together, looked at your array of words in the folder once more

All of them white sapphires, I’m not exaggerating one bit, Bhaskar-da

Dazzling here, darkened there, flecked with gold or with silver

But white sapphires, all. How on earth was it possible.

I do not know. But I’m saying, there will never be another

Not even in Bangla.

2) The history of sunlight

In brothels there's little light and plenty of darkness, in which

Lechers appear like heavenly bodies and peep through

The bars to find the stars of the whores lying in bed...

Lost Poets Series| Hungryalist poets translated by Arunava Sinha| Part 2

We present to you English translations of poems by two more lesser known Hungry Generation poets for the first time. All the poems have been translated by the acclaimed translator, Arunava Sinha.

'Kusma's Door'* by Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai
Source: Facebook page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

Selim Mustafa

1. Hiroshima

Coils of smoke on ruined earth

Over the smoke millions of years 

Of enchanted nights

This night is Hiroshima

This night is Nagasaki

The moonlight comes up the stairs

Climbs down the stairs

The antenna shivers

Sorrow too has its staircase, its history 

This night is Guernica

This night is Bibhutibhushan.

2. India 1 & 2

1.

Who laughs?

Hyenas

Who dances?

Ghosts

Who watches?

Jackals

Who weeps?

Humans.

2

Not here? Says who? I exist

Do you think I, like all of you,

Survive in the human jungle,

Underground or in goodness?

No, it’s in your prison that I live.

Falguni Roy

1. I have no conflict with people

No, I have no conflict with people any more

I can easily take my creditor to the hospital if he’s in an accident

I can unhesitatingly ask my old lover’s husband for a cigarette

With the ease of growing a beard I can in this life

See a universal sexual peace in Ramakrishna’s devotion to Kali

When I lose a single slipper I buy a new pair

No, I have no conflict with people any more

My uncomfortable gaze shifts from my sister’s breasts

On the ritual day of sisterly love I wander around whorehouses

When I die I will see the corridor of second births

Till the moment before my birth I didn’t know I would be born

I am a man without redemption engaged in destiny

I am a man without destiny engaged in terrorism

I have seen a dog sobbing within me constantly

For his bitch, a monk become an eager debauch

To deflower a woman monk’s self-imposed virginity

And even heavenly love is pulverised by this debauchery

Eventually I’m in favour of seeking the joy of life instead of

Rhythm in poetry, that’s why I have no conflict with life

No conflict with people.

2. A redundant poem

I am a newly arrived stranger on earth’s ancient body

Now as the doctor slices the poet’s vein to collect blood

I remember wanting to sell my own blood

To drink and write poetry

Have I gone to the dogs? Many mysteries are still under cover

I am still afraid to die, which means I love life

So I walk beneath the overcast sky

With the Red Book in one hand and Jibanananda’s poetry

In the other – I dislike those who wear sunglasses 

When it’s Cloudy, I dislike those who think of god 

When slammed by the world, I adore those who kick away

Idols of the gods and ask what is what, with great enthusiasm

I take Marx Lenin Sartre Joyce Kafka to the Coffee House

To destroy cigarettes and then walked by myself through a crowd

Of people, desolate, actually I’m getting nothing from books

Hoping to get something from my lover I run to her to find her

In bed with my elder brother, an officer, I am unemployed

I talked of love with the whores, my brother the officer bought

My lover a sari with his bonus and became her lover, the money

He spent would have paid for my meals for a month, which means

It costs the same to cover my future wife’s body and to feed me

Can you imagine this existence of ours

Still I love the naked child’s chuckles, the renewal of the

Ancient earth, in front of my hungry eyes the beautiful woman’s

Framework of bones passes through time towards the pyre, I sell

Fat philosophy books to buy bread and alcohol just for sustenance

I even manage to write, believe me, to write a redundant poem.

*This life-size painting (1985) belongs to the National Gallery of Modern Art. It depicts the abandoned home of the dacoit queen Kusma Nain on the UP-MP border. Anil had travelled there with the journalist Kalyan Mukherjee on the trail of Kusma who had fled after taking revenge on her upper caste rapists.

Read all poems from the Lost Poets Series.

Lost Poets Series| Hungryalist poets translated by Arunava Sinha| Part 1

We are happy to announce that we will be publishing English translations of poems by lesser known Hungry Generation poets  for the first time over the next few weeks. All the poems have been translated by the acclaimed translator, Arunava Sinha.

A painting by Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai
Source: http://hungryalistgeneration.blogspot.in

Subo Acharya  

1. The sounds of a dog with no duties

Thrice I’ve exchanged glances with a dog with no duties
Noting at the base of every lamppost on the street
A distinctive self-contradiction I advance it can also
Be called retreating there’s no fear of being ambushed
All movements are unrestrained and using the alphabet
Words like ‘love’ and ‘death’ are utilised for sport
Every day on the beach just this instant I have put
A hand prone to criminal acts in my empty pocket
With the other I chuck the featureless chin
Of the world, saying, ‘dance little lady dance’ –

2. Sanjukta and the seventeen horsemen

I don’t know what you were doing then

A wrinkling of the nose curling of the lips then phooey?

Dismounting one by one, the seventeen galloping horsemen 

Bowed their heads and turned to stone

The horses cantered haphazardly

Towards the lake

I don’t know what you were doing after that

You wound up a top and let it spin

Gathering diurnal and annual momentum it revolved around you

Sinking to their necks in the mud the horses

Stretched their necks to neigh in unison

And the helmets of the seventeen soldiers began

To fling themselves at your feet

And then

When you could not find a single unbloomed bud

In your belly, breasts or anywhere on your body

Tying themselves into a knot, your nerve-endings

Took you swiftly beyond joy and illness, to a place

Where you kept giving birth, one by one,

To seventeen horsemen, and climbing upon a dome

Touching the sky, you dried your hair with the sun on your back

And when the sunlight died you narrowed your eyes

Shielding them with your hand you began to search

For the seventeen cowards from your womb. 

Shaileswar Ghosh

1. I am hungry

As soon as I put my hand on a woman’s body she turned to gold

I’m a penniless labourer I live in Port Commission Quarter No. 5

The touch of my breath split the Communist Party into two

My arms lengthened, legs shortened, organ remained unchanged

I have seen my mother in bed with a god.

My father lost all he had gambling – an insane Van Gogh

Had seen flames in the rice fields and in Tahiti’s islands

Gauguin’s dog spread syphilis – from my mouth I have pulled out

The kind of sea whose tides don’t swell, resist all attraction

Watching a boxing match on television I ran to my male friend.

I move around with you eat and drink with you sleep with you

I steal your money I buy one woman after another

When I enter a church its spire collapses, I am hungry

All the doors and windows of libraries close at my sight.

I was given hashish as payment for roasting the rotis

On the streets I hear nothing but my own footsteps

My words light up India’s nuclear furnaces instantly

When I’m really upset I exchange blows with my friends

A friend stole ten rupees I didn’t return a hundred I’d borrowed

I don’t give a damn, for I have tasted heavenly flesh

Poetry rises like the Ochterlony Monument, destroying my mind

I tell the truth when I hallucinate – I see an angel

They’re dismantled when struck by a rocket – when I’m hungry

They drag me away where my intestines fill with people’s love

One of my mates is a bastard, another a traitor, one a murderer

They escaped to our gathering without passports – another one

Broke into railway wagons to loot all the aluminium ovens

I take my girlfriend into the bathroom – I am blind in one eye

I have never seen a Rolls Royce – I like smoking by myself

And when necessary I push myself all the way to Dumdum Airport.

2. I plucked a single flower

I plucked a single flower it was enough to break my world

Every day I find my clothes ill-fitting on my body

I killed a bird whose song was meant to wake the world

I will be released after destroying every faith.

Memories of sleeping with her father figure makes a monk woman seek more darkness

The grass knows the lightning that strikes its breast is a play of power 

At last I know that severing the stalk is the creator’s finest act.

When there’s celebration on the ground we’re made to fear shipwrecks from a height

Our life is to watch, mesmerised, the male character playing the eunuch

An ascetic had to lay down his life because his heart had overflown with love

All the flowers that blossom from my deed are witches used to worship you.

I open my eyes to see the swan writhing in pain from the embedded arrow

When I nurse it back to life the hunter wants half of what I’ve saved

Peace descends only at those moments when gold and iron cost the same.

When I pluck the flower I’m a terrorist - I have offered my senses to the world

On the last train I heard the professional whore’s enchanting singing with the thieves

All weapons are off on pilgrimage now – murderers have located their personal sorrows

The gods we have come to adore change their positions every day

Satan coils himself around a young girl like a serpent to drink from her breasts

The form in which I saw my mother from the womb burns bright in my memory

Life demands to know from life, are all forms of violence your children?

I plucked a single flower it was enough to break my world

A single tear falls on my face from space – I only gaze upwards

All the streams flowing from my body have gathered in a river

Many kicks await you still if the scars from the shackles remain

The moment terror was born, the world split into two, proponents and opponents

When the deluge begins every exponent of life seeks safe sanctuary.

Thrust your son into the wedding bedroom, father, stand guard with your stick

Over the iron bedroom, tonight he will be born and die soon after

The shortcut to heaven passes through hell.

I plucked a single flower it was enough to break my world

A droplet of light lay down its life to reveal the image of my darkness

Read all poems from the Lost Poets Series.