By the banks of the Ajoy, Jaideb vanishes into the blue by Subhankar Das

Jaideb’s sweet meat shop is long gone.  Why did he leave with that
lady-spirit of Mudiali, to sell sweets in Hydra? Why do they all go?
Where do they go?? In every going there is a staying back.
The flower which steals the breaking blues of the ocean is known as
Hydra. Hercules had killed, almost killed that nine-headed beast.
Where of all places did he bury the lone immortal head? Where?
Fragrance of the long-lost memories fills the air, whose gust kisses
the cyclopean rocks and grasses.


She ran up to me and kissed and kissed.  The entwined existence
enjoyed the pleasure-blinks while I forgot the vacillating fingers and
the predictable disaster. Who knew, it was but a greeting. It happens
all the time when the sun kisses the lemon tree in the neighboring
garden, Oh Yes! Its lemon and not olive, I know. Wine and sour olives
have stung my palate again and again so often.


The beautiful maidens sing no more the death song while spreading the
insect poison. Here the death song is to run from one mountain peak to
another in one breath and smuggle the body bugs in the rough waves of
locks. It is easy, to be Mr. Blue in this blue & white land. Henry
Denandar knew how words of poetry could escape, only to be captured as
colours, someplace else. That Mr. Blue never could know. But the girl
knew that all too well. So also knew Henry Miller that silence, a
pause in the musical score of creation by an expert calligrapher.


That pretty fish in my aquarium who loved me so dearly is gone today.
Why do they all go? Where do they go? There is a staying in every
going away. All the rocks are but mad. They have lost their stoniness
in these magical lights, unknowingly, that’s why instead of the heart
there plays a light. She’s not here but I see her sitting on a chair
every day with her tresses flowing, thinking unmindful. I do not look
at her, for she may leave again, intrigued, floating away with the
pretty fish. She did although ask for a kiss someday.  The “Kathal
Champa” flower also needs profound sunlight to blossom. All trees know
that, know the death-madness, childish silliness of hatred. But how do
I call her in this darkness, will she find her way?  As though the
darkness, pleasure would be safe if she found her way.


The wine sellers know how to quench the thirst, the unending craving
of man mad for words. Everybody thinks they know everything, in
reality nothing is ever known. There is no need to know anything. No
need to recognize anything. While having tablets one might have to
advise against it someday. To love, someone must learn to un-love
first. As the word will become his shield so everyday the disaster
comes to beg for his shield, takes back all the failures, all the
realities, all the dead pledges.


The red skies and eyes are blue; the evening is just falling on the
apartment.  Shall it cover the apartment entirely! Tell that woman who
is doing the rain dance for me in her dry garden across several
thousand seas, it is raining incessantly here.  In peaceful deep
slumber lay the two tired dogs and the itching bugs. And over my
entire body play the gleeful immortality of the pretty fishes and the
madness of those lights.


________________________


Subhankar Das has 14 published books of Bangla poetry.  He has been
a translator Of Allen Ginsberg's poems in Bangla.  He is a book store
owner.  His works have appeared in Graffiti Kolkata Broadside, Mad Swirl,
Danse Macabre, Caper Journal, Leaf Garden etc. He lives in Kolkata.​