Like shadows, a cane-basket and hair grip
They have left behind are symbols of depression,
When I think that way
My blood fluctuates like ebb and flow.
Shaswata Gangopadhyay, an eminent Bengali poet from Kolkata, West Bengal, India shares his poetry
Hailing from Kolkata, West Bengal, India, Shaswata Gangopadhyay is one of the prominent faces of contemporary Bengali poetry, who started writing in Mid 90s. Shaswata’s poems have been published in all major Bengali Poetry journals. He has participated in different International poetry festivals of Europe and Both North and Latin America. His poems have been published in all six continents in more than 150 International Journals and Anthologies through translations in 7-8 languages. His book of Poems include: Inhabitant of Pluto Planet (2001), Offspring of Monster (2009), Holes of Red Crabs (2015), In the city of myth and mushroom (2023) and Poems of Shaswata Gangopadhyay (2023). He has also been invited to read his poems in UK, USA, France, Australia, South Africa, Colombia and Portugal Virtual Book Fair, Paris, Vienna and Frankfurt. Very recently he has received ‘Sparkling Soul Award’ from Chile, Latin America. This year, He was invited to Prestigious ‘Gateway Lit Fest’ at Mumbai to read his poems.
A ballad on estrangement
You’re not easily available, for me very tough to meet you
On the Nilgiri Mountain, Kurinji flowers blooming
In autumn, every twelve years gap,
You resemble the very identical species
You’ve bloomed once again during this season, all over the valley
Those suffering from leprosy, assemble there and believe that
They’ll be cured if they paste grinding petals of
A rare species like you, on their wounds
All their old maladies’ll be gone for good.
Following the equator, I’ve also come here
We are belonging to the same planet, but rarely meeting each other
I’ll climb to search you, using the worn-out staircase through mist
Will lie down tiringly on the notch of a stone, you just cast off upon
My body, open your petals from head to the fingers of your two legs
Let the storm dash out, if you put your lips on my lips
You’re the sanatorium to me, the secret panacea.
***
The way Vincent Van Gogh thought
Was I born on a stone
With froth and shrub on my body?
Here and there those mine- workers
And pregnant women, who ramble
Like shadows, a cane-basket and hair grip
They have left behind are symbols of depression,
When I think that way
My blood fluctuates like ebb and flow
One who throws towards the distressed people
Strong ladders knitted with ropes,
I’ll certainly reach near them
With my easel and colour-brush
Their wounded parts following my glance
Are peeping through my drawings of sketches
Just like a sun-flower growing solitarily
And secretly in the womb of night.
***
A Little Mag: An Advertisement
Whenever it’s published, it should first of all contain
A prose, from whose every alphabet
Would emit ashes of lava…brittle…endless
Which’ll slowly engulf the contemporary Bengali Poetry
After this, there’d be a round-table, a few young poets participating,
As if an interview among some crickets,
That’ll be printed intact
As they’re caught in a tape recorder
Immediately after, there are poems of those
Who are composing very recently
A poem of one each, nothing more, nothing less,
But in each is traceable each one’s quiver of heartbeat,
ECG report, separately identifiable
The last item is to include review of books.
In present issue an elderly poet
Who had died long since 17 years ago
Is from that time onwards waiting for his re-birth
While reading him the readers will come to feel
Someone is opening the lid of the coffin
And putting his hand upon the shoulder
[Translated from Bengali to English by Rajdeep Mukherjee]
____________________
Read: Let’s live a life of a winning warrior – A Poem from Bengal
