Poem From Another Land

By deeper water, upon greener rock, I had pitched my tent And washed away with care the colour of my scream Your bone and stone ornaments dried on wet rock And Night would spread its blue-black skin upon the water Then, it wasn’t in this land I lived! The animal hides you gave me to wrap around my waist I laid beneath my head to sleep on the island sand In the distance a whale released water through its nose, in the early morning sun One by one all the corals emerged from the sea - One day a wandering Marco Polo anchored his ship One day Columbus too - Who was first, who second, can you remember? - And once On his way back from his long desolate exile Crusoe, Robinson; he spent a couple of hours with us Dined with us on long fish roasted in fire Not a single bone in them - “excellent” he remarked in dense creeper-covered forest, I noticed the way the early morning sun flashed - while speaking with you from beneath his nutbrown beard there flashed such a smile - Then, it wasn’t in this land I lived! Tonight why do I recall that tent upon a rock Why do those bone and feather ornaments sparkle in the dark? Here where the butterflies are lightless and the minerals damp as a cold From sleeping bodies warm vapour rises constantly If I try to wash the wound of my scream, then From the water there will rise a crimson smoke! But running will not help! I will fetch the rocks and warm them Warm them and whet them Soon their inert tips Will sharpen and glisten And then Do you remember one time in the dark how A drunken bear pounced on you And I with just such a sharp rock Flattened him right there, in the sand? [Translated from Bengali by Oindrila Mukherjee]