just this one

All the rest are poems of death, just this one is of life

All the rest are poems of my own, just this one is yours
All the rest are poems that are stopped, hesitant – remnants of ambition frozen on the lips
flooded monsoon streets with open manholes spewing sewage
wounded bleeding bodies left behind by tires after tires, and the fear of
a bridge collapsing

All the rest are poems about cities, just this one is about the country.

All the rest are poems of death, just this one is of life
All the rest are poems of my own, just this one is yours
This one is of the wild sea, of all the pains that were yet to be shared
of the one who walked into the waves one spring, without a reason
of laughing people bending double, letting the wind seep in with the dust
of leaves flying away in thousands, speaking of impending storms.

All the rest are poems of the Ganga, just this one is about the Yamuna.

________

Ganga Yamuna by Shankha Ghosh (from the collection 'murkho boro, shamajik noy'(1974))
Note: This is a translation I did a while back, sometime in 2007. And it appears it never left the domain of email..maybe it's time for it to be here. captured, sealed, and exhibited from behind the glass wall.