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Sonnets from Rupashi Bangla,Translated by Gazi Abdulla-hel Baqui – Daily CN Bangla

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sonnets from Rupashi Bangla,Translated by Gazi Abdulla-hel Baqui

Sonnets from Rupashi Bangla
Original : Jibanananda Das
Translation: Gazi Abdulla-hel Baqui

(Jibanananda Das (17 February 1899 – 22 October 1954),popularly called “Rupashi Banglar Kabi” (Poet of Beautiful Bengal),emerged towards the end of the twentieth century, as one of the most popular poets of modern Bangla literature for his extraordinary poetic faculty, unfamiliar poetic diction full of rhetoric, unusual choice of words, bright imageries and incomparable indirect expressions paved with inexpressible sensuousness.

Gazi Abdulla-hel Baqui, a modern poet writing both in Bangla and English, has translated some of the Das’ poems using appropriate words and phrases. His lucid translated work clearly evinces his dexteritythat differs from others in his own art of rendering verses as he is very much faithful to the original. Thus he emerges as a potential translator.—Editor)

1. Go Wherever

Go wherever you like—I shall stay on this shore of Bangla
To gaze at jackfruit leaves dropping in the breeze of dawn;
I shall look at the brown wings of Shalik getting cool in the evening;
Its yellow legs under soft white fur hop dancing
In the grass in darkness , —once—twice—and, then suddenly
Hijol tree of the jungle dearly summons it to reach its heart side;
I shall view the piteous female hands’ white bangles weeping in gray air
Like conch-shell: in the evening she stands on the bank of a pond,
To take the light brown coloured duck as if to some land of stories—
Her soft body smells legends of antiquity,
As if she was born out of clusters of Kalmi in the pond-nest—
She washes her feet for once—then in the unknown far off land
Disappears in the fog,—still I know I shall never lose her
In the crowds of the world—she is still on this shore of my land.

2. I have enjoyed

I have enjoyed the face of Bangla, so I do no more go out in quest of
The beauty of the world: waking up in the dark I glance at a Doel bird of dawn
Sitting under an umbrella-like large leaf in a fig-tree—I cast my look all around
And see the heaps of leaves of Black-berry—Banyan—Jackfruit—Hijol—
Peepul—lying silent; their shadows have fallen on the hedges of cactus
And woods of zedoary; in what long past she could behold the blue shade of
Hijol, Banyan, Mangosteen grove and the matchless beauty of Bangla from
Madhukar boat along the ancient city of Champa Chand belonged to
Is not known; once Behula also on a raft on the Gangur river—
When the moonbeam of the dark twelfth night waned away on the
Riverbank—alas, she saw numerous Peepul trees near the golden paddy field,
And heard the soft song of Shama bird—once reaching Amara
She danced like a detached torn wagtail in the royal assembly of Indra,
Rivers, fields, violets of Bangla wept at her feet like the ankle-bells.

3. Again I shall return

Again I shall return to the bank of Dhanshiri River—to this Bangla
Maybe not as a human—perhaps as a seagull or as a Shalik bird,
Likely as a crow of dawn in this land of festival of harvesting new rice in Kartik,
I shall come floating in the wave of fog under the jackfruit shade;
Perhaps I shall be a duck of a teen-aged girl with ankle bells around her red feet;
I shall pass the whole day floating on the duckweed smelled water;
Again I shall come with my love to rivers, fields and land of Bangla,
On this green gray land, washed by the waves of Jalangi river.
Perhaps you will gaze at a Sudarshan winging in the evening air;
Perhaps you will hear a barnowl screeching on a branch of a Shimul tree;
Perhaps a child is strewing paddy for puffed-rice on a grassy courtyard;
In the turbid Rupsha waters a young boy is likely plying a dinghy
Hoisting its torn sail; you will view white herons returning to their nests
Swimming through reddish clouds in the dark; you will get me in their crowds.

4. Leaving this land

Leaving this land, alas, who goes out to tread the world paths in quest of beauty?
The dried leaves of Banyan trees as if remind us of stories of an old age:
They are strewn away in paths of lonesome fields in desolate Agrayan month;
Disregarding these, tell me, who will be bound for foreign lands—I shall
In no way go to Malabar—Utir mountain quitting Basmoti rice-field forever;
I shall not see Palm trees nodding their tops to the sea-uproar in any land;
Where cardamom flower and Cinnamon isle weave in the female heart of Baruni,
The dream of sitting by tousling hair-braid—I shall not go to any land of the world:
The fallen leaves of Peepul trees are strewn amid pale white dust-grains;
When in this silent part of day none is found anywhere, even not a single bird;
The monotonously grown grass has been scattered on soil and grains of gravel,
One or two dejected sparrows are returning displacing bits of hay and straw,
The fallen leaves of Peepul are lying inside pale white dust-grains;
So, leaving this land and paths, this life did never land on any other country.

5. I shall go into pain

I shall go into pain for overthinking—I may feel if I would have lived in the world
I would see the face of that barnowl that I have never seen quite well—a shy bird,
Do its grey wings dance about in the waves of fog? The seven stars of constellation
Come out in murkiness; do they descend on the densely leafy bosom of Gab tree?
Do flickering glowworms shed delusive light through the dark alleys of Jeuli and
Babla trees? The mind of children and wives is lost in the green flesh of the
Droning crickets; they are sought in the dark whether lost in the Akanda hedges,
Nobody will spot their trace beneath Makal creepers and in blue dewy water.
Also the wings of that golden seagull—do its wings still get drifted away in the
Fog-dripped field? When evening turns golden, these move to the leafless Peepul?
Do field rats still cast their eyes to stars through soft sheaves of paddy?
In strange surprise I shall remain awake for a period of time in the lap of dark bed.
(12 lines instead of fourteen lines)

CNBangla/Abdul Kadir Jibon

 

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