To Dash

And there will be deathless souls
Screaming and piercing the sky like white owls
as they journey to the moon.

Lovers beckon, thirsty as the dried up river
that shies below the draughted earth.
Above, they kiss holding breaths
and the unending moisture wets.

A cactus is born with red rose.

To this Dhansiri riverside, where the nostalgic Shalik
looks back with dark eyes,
you may yearn for a return to the place
that you have searched for, with a life.

If you come back, tiptoeing, unassumingly as a stranger,
that you have always been,
Poet, you may see,
they still remember a woman by her hair,
they still love each other by eyes.

Poet,
Natore is still the new bride you had seen.
The ghaats and the owls and the boats and the crows hear
the steps that had brought rains once.

Banalata waits to be loved again.



- Soumya :)


Jibanananda Dash will be very special to me for more reasons than one. He was the only one who could have his own route despite being somewhat contemporary to Tagore, for being the lonely poet he has been, for being reckless, ahead of time, tremendously passionate and same way poor. For he never had happiness but the yearning to find peace, in rural bengal, in insignificant things.

Dhansiri - a small river. Shalik - a bird, Banalata - Dash's love interest in literature, Natore - a small small place in Bengal.

Comments

Usha Pisharody said…
Re-reading this one. The love and respect, and the awe you hold him with is tangible.

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