Things Recalled At Night

All that rainfall Laid out in the rainfall, all those dead bodies Beating at the dead bodies, all that wind Trembling with the wind but not billowing out, all those encompassing shrouds Thrusting their muzzles in, tugging at the cloth, all those night-time dogs Shouting, driving the dogs away, all those attendants Half-naked, squatting attendants Laid down beside the attendants, all those wooden staves Those clay pipes not burning, in the rain Those not-burning pyres Spaced apart, all those not-burning pyres Behind the pyres, the ragged river-bank And on all those ragged edges, risen from the water, All their mothers sit Their heads covered with uncolored cloth Risen up from the water after long years, climbed down from the rain, All their mothers sit like small white bundles So that at burning time They can be close to their sons-- At burning time when the dead will remember a wife left behind An only daughter who ran away with her lover Unresolved property and a friend’s treachery The dead man will remember the first day at school and Unseen for so long, unresisted, the cause of his own death When he tries, flustered, to sit up on the pyre one last time And the attendant’s stave strikes hard, breaking him, laying him out-- Then she can touch that fire-burnt skull With her age-old kitchen-weary pot-scrubbing shriveled hand And, spreading the end of her sari over those molten eyes, the widow can say Don’t fret, baba, my son, here I am, here, I’m your mother, here, right at your side! Not: The original poem [raatre kI kI mane pa.Dechhilo] appeared in the collection of poems 'paataar poshhaak' [Translated by Prasenjit Gupta]