The Sound Of Bathing

I don't know how I, at this midnight, have become two eyes having all my existence within me, as if they were a pair of twin bees sitting abreast on the tepid flesh. Darkness walks both on my consciousness and unconsciousness. Quick-shivering feelings of mine like the tongue of a snake run away touching the shed of my blood. It seems that melancholic parting moment of a boy has been attached to all my senses. Affection of my mother being the warm fragrant vapour of my last food-plate collides with my nose. Adieu, O Sight .O the born blind Past, don't come near me. O the trees, my dwelling house and river, be dark forever and disappear like the songs of birds into the deep ever-bright green. While walking ashore, suddenly I notice on the opposite bank the body of Day turning into a globe of light. Making sonorous sound of bathing at the staircase of wharf, someone says to her companion,'See yonder a little boy walking penetrating the deep fog.How can a mother send her child outside in a morning of Magha cold such as? Walking alone into fog--- what a sight ! ' My observation of birds' flying and the day behind the river turns to be something more than play. Sweat grows on my smooth forehead .Dust gathers on knees. By raising hands, it's not possible now to hide the light. Being lofty, the god of Day has ascended the flaming sky. The sound of water makes me realise that it's the sport of bathing. The village girls, surrounding the wharf, say to one another showing me, `Who's that guy? Which vllage is he going to? To some beautiful lady perhaps!' When thirst dies, sweat becomes dry by the wind. At last the birds of pastureland, exchanging eyes with one another, fly away with their ruddy wings. I feel tired. No sorrow, no solicitation, no thirst drives me more. Even I don't know which wharf I have reached now. Having eighteen pitchers on waists, the village wives go back home. Someone of them says in intense tune, 'Who knows where this old passer-by will go crossing the dark bog?' [Translated by Sayeed Abubakar from Sonali Kabin]