From "Jakham" ( Wound )

A Hungryalist poem translated in various languages. Originally written in Bengali

From ‘Jakham’

Awning ablaze with toxic fire above me

I lie watching the winged blue of this crawling sky

putting down the crushing anger of my suffering

I cross exam my nocturne doubts

pushing a gramophone needle over the lines of my palm

I scan the prophecy

armature on the left turned slag long ago

now eye flesh twitching in the smoke of malay’s burning skeleton

dismantled tempests sweep by at 99mph

uniform queues of wrist watched zombies tattle trade cyclic seine

a swinging bat threatened me in this black dungeon

800,000 doorless jamb stare for eternity over the liquid meadow

16 division ravens whirl around my torso for 25 years

my bones reel clutching my raw wounds

my peeled flesh blood

flaying my skin I uncover arrogant frescoes of my trap

ageless sabotage inside the body

patrolling darkness in the hemoglobin

I’m deciding what to do with me now

I’ve inherited emergent vengeance polished for 6000 years

tugging at man’s insensibility scraping old plaster of my skin

fingernails look magnanimous after the meal

people are returning home on tortoise back

failing to search out my heart in my body

man training man the fair-spoken codes of war & hospitality

gathering fallen limbs from the torso we’ve to retreat to

I lie lazily closing both eyelids wrapped in sun flakes

coked reeks conspiring in my veins turned loose

ohh

from the vapour of brain’s angry kernel

technicoloured nitrocellulose oozes over dreamlined retina

letters of sympathy heaped against half closed futureless door

my black muscles rust

equally true corpses of geniuses & fool... slime simultaneously into earth

each woman is waiting with a conversion chart in her desolate womb

Gandhi & Attila’s equi-chemical blood

streams through  same veins

nothing happens to me... nothing will happen to this earth either

neither could I practice usury like the rest of mankind

nor shoot dice made of human bones

seeds floating in air try to slouch roots

into my unfertile swea-tbeads

I dreamt of my failure in Bumghang’s apple orchard

I couldn’t choose the luxurious comfort of an insect

sleeping in the cushioned kitchen of a corn’s kernel

I’ve been spitting inside my body for the last 25 years

scraping off from mirror’s knave mercury self-savior imprints of my violent face

each & all having a certificate from the burning-ghat doctor

for their performance of duty until last breath

2000 hounds released from out of my skull

haunting me for 25yrs

sniffing the alleys trod by women I advance toward their

amateur abode

my heart-lump split open in terror

when I looked at footprints on dark pavement

sounds of dripping sand have evoked my skin pores

my spine burnt smoke billow through chimneys of skin

ants drag flesh copses through moth made clay veins

damn barefoot amid sea gulf I proceed

to sullen den of vultures

I’ve experienced magic simultaneously of food

concealing envious tints of blood & pus

perverse sugarcane brain sucks

liquid philanthropic dirt out of earth

my Dirt my Love my Blood

clouds drift by like pieces of discarded bloodseained cloth

I now recall Bluegirl’s sick left tit….

Vibrating with heart’s feeble flutter

Life’s whacklings are to be endured until death

with a dumb tongue

a blazing mantle hangs in place of my heart machine

plus-minus signs and compasses with broken needles

stream through my arteries

rifle’s dazzling nozzle & diesel-roller sleep

in iron-ore of earth

and stored deep down in zink’s brain

newspapers’ Yes & newspaper’s No

my feet do not realize

I’m controlling their speed & direction

I’m not sure if I’ll have to become unworldly

paying excise with an untransferable woman

I gloomed all through the winter forging my own signature

was born not wanting to be born

now without unlacing my shoes

I want to plunge into the glow less dark

everybody is making arrangements for Tomorrow

shoes are having sympathetic polish this evening

only for Tomorrow

yet even circular roads get hold of man’s legs

one day or the other

lusting for limbs 303 greased cartouches

stashed in new pineboxes rush up to frontiers of countries

2510 years after Buddha sprawled on Gandhi-lawn

model-’65 leftover shoes & umbrellas of cop & non-cop clashes

in the warehouse of cocaine & counterfeit money

Indian & Chinese citizens mirth together in ecstasy

I had lifted a 5-paise coin from a blind beggar’s palm

I had looted benevolent money of hearse-corpses

Out of parched groin

crossed death-panic on a boat not knowing how to swim

I may be censored I can not be disregarded

(Translation of ‘Jakham’)1965