Poems by Yashodhara Ray Chaudhuri

 

Poems by Yashodhara Ray Chaudhuri 

Translated from the original Bengali by Chirayata Purna Chakrabarty 

 

1. Selfie-full

 

The dead of the night - want of blood,  

want of sense, only selfie-full 

What zest in interest if only for a moment, 

that is want of blood and want of sense, of course. 

Brain-death comes in secret and compromise.  

The hurt mouth drools, perforce. 

 

In that fair cleft, it flushes  

views and notions, want of blood. 

It only builds and builds a silence; 

Stuffs with a good time for gauze 

Into the hurting, drooling pit.

 

 

2.The Shoal 

 

They feed at the surface as you lay in the deep 

Know, and let them know 

All you can give 

And are willing to keep 

 

On the face of the water toil stirs, and now 

Mind’s soiled and how 

This sickly morn 

By Having, Wanting; worn 

 

The chafes and the haggles, and keeping score, 

As you sip at your tea 

And nibble at your biscuits 

Then ask for more 

 

You lay in the deep as they feed at the top 

They brawl and bicker 

Wrestling minnow 

Your shoal of carp 

 

What troubled uproar, they're war-prepared 

You know nothing 

Of this furious throng 

For it happened up there 

 

You're in the deep where it’s quiet and bare, 

Your mind’s ink-wrapped 

Still and cooled, 

And sunlight-rare 

 

You lay unrippled for nothing fares here 

Not your minnows and carps 

Or their surface remarks 

 

“How many is that now, dear?”

 

 

3. Women, writing

 

Bitter cucumber in winter time, 

Sunless shade-like, dozen a dime 

They folded easy, doormat daisies 

 

 

When they made an omnibus 

All swiftly oblivious 

Unnamed them to obscurity

 

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