A year that was, will be

This year passed in confinement.

Detached eyes and ears,

It also passed in sublime seclusion,

Time spent with me, myself

Many times in days and nights

I died and I cried

I also laughed and smiled

I did resurrect.

I lived through my virtual pen

That brought to me loving eyes and listening ears

This year, like the year that was

Without much attached rules and laws

My breathing space of hope and despair

Went... in an unheard fulfilment.

Content.

I have nothing to look forward to

Past is the future without a hint or clue.

Time is the predicament.

Nothing will change

In the minds weird, strange

Hunger for anger all around

Distaste for peace

Starving the poor without ground

Wouldn’t be closer to bliss

That, my pen would reflect.

Except for the sky on which I’d walk

I know the earth would feel

The flowers with whom I’d talk

I know grasses will see

Leaves will drop to heal

Their touch and their smell would come to me

I know, in the form of family and friends

With bones and flesh

Alive and lively for the sake of a few

My heart would beat next year too

With love, without repent.

insane journey

The world is raging

With hatred, anger

To avenge the mindless killing

Of innocent lives, war

It is all set to declare;

The Third World War;

Escaping the sight,

From those collective wrath and wry

Sprung a song, in the guise of a dancing cry

For the sake of those same naive lives

Squeezed and stole its way for a tryst

To search for the first world peace.

Earth

Look...just look at the map!

Names are changing and so are the minds,

We’re not in holes, neither in any lapse

The real change is here, from useless feuds unkind.

Earthnorth America! Earthsouth America!

Eartheurope! Earthafrica!

Earthasia! Earthaustralia and Earthoceania!

Countries on this earth, humming eureka, eureka...

Ears and eyes have opened to the stable moving earth,

Graves of grieves have softened, rejoicing in this re-birth.

New focus is our earth, not any invisible stars,

The mud is set to plough where reaps will heal the scars.

Earthnorth America! Earthsouth America!

Eartheurope! Earthafrica!

Earthasia! Earthaustralia and Earthoceania!

Countries on this earth, humming eureka, eureka...

Words, words, and words we’d all been fighting for words,

Good that now we found the earth in our world.

We’d safeguard still our respective identities,

Like flowers of one garden blooming all at ease.

Earthnorth America! Earthsouth America!

Eartheurope! Earthafrica!

Earthasia! Earthaustralia and Earthoceania!

Countries on this earth, humming eureka, eureka...

In conversation with...

In the middle of changes,

The mind is armed.

Unable to deliver from the chains

A slippery surface, a bond

To win is to kill.

The intelligent brain with unmatched skill

That could bring heaven from the sky

Is hurting the earth with wrath and wry,

In chain is the constant destiny

Not changed a bit has our wailing history.

Good leaders of the world,

Old leaders of the world,

New leaders of the world,

Bold leaders of the world,

Guns are for those insecure and scared

Don’t flaunt them, benumb them

Stop this destructive expensive game.

They’re for those helpless cowards

Step in, we need you, come forward.

Join us for a change, please listen to us

Good and old, new and bold leaders

Follow the drum that beats too in your hearts.

An appeal by the peoples of this star

A cry from all the countries without bar

Is to re-build the world with gumption and sense,

Kill the need to scythe with our creative intelligence.

We want a no-weapon world,

A weapon-less world, a weapon-free world,

Focus, our leaders on this timeless troubled floor

Don’t create and market those killers anymore

Stock them now for good in their only asylum

Freeze them now with care in the new museum.

All countries will have one sacred little space

Where heartless treasured arms would coffin all in grace

Flags would fly on top, hum a different unsung tune

That was hiding in the hearts, in the depraved morn and noon.

Those museums, our children would visit and say

‘Once upon a time, we used these to kill and slay

We are out of it now thank goodness

We won’t get killed anymore, good riddance.’

...

Why did you write this poem in my mind?

What is your intention I don’t understand

That which repeats with organs mute and blind

To bring about the change on this history’s land

Do you think it’s possible? This miraculous magic!

Of course yes it is, the hearts are waiting to click

It cannot happen with might, it cannot happen with force

Would happen if you please, by tapping the constant source

You may call it love or by any other name

Present in all of us, in ways just the same

With the peoples of the world, the real power lies

From enemies everywhere, friends will smile and rise

Lively arms would stretch and inert arms will yield

For those who lied on streets, and those who died on fields

Tired objects would rest in silent museum

Minds would all be free, from the insane asylum

Pursuit

My moment has arrived, in time devoured

Extent to complete hanging onto my hat

Contour of the verge scored

Glimmer of a fiction or fact.

How implausibly stable I’d think,

The demeanour of the constant while,

I’d float in the immovable wave of time

In the preface of my story’s ink.

With hand-holding years seemingly few

Stages slowly passed by

Confines time and again anew

Made me forget, wingless boater could fly.

Today, having arrived at the near end of my game

My seat on the proem as I see,

Everyday dressed just the same

On the flower is the busy blending bee.

Permanence or cliff-hanger, both lie,

In their lazy chorus underlying theme,

Euphonious time stays, appears to wither and fly

Around the balanced, resolute stream.

The Bengali version of the poem is অভিযান, posted here.  

অভিযান

আমার সময় এসেছে,

সব প্রতীক্ষার শেষ ৷

সীমার রেখা টেনেছে,

ঘটনা-গল্প কেটে যাওয়ার রেশ ৷

কি অবিশ্বাস্য স্থায়িই না ভাবতম

এখানের স্থির সময়ের চলাটাকে

কালের অচল স্রোতে ভাসতাম

গ’ড়ে চলা কাহীনির ভূমিকাতে ৷ 

বছরের হাত ধ’রে,

সময় চলে যেত,

সীমানা নতুন ক’রে,

ডানাহীন গতিকে ভুলিয়ে দিত ৷

গল্পের প্রায় শেষপ্রান্তে এসে আজ 

দেখি, শুরুতেই ব’সে আছি ৷

প্রতিদিনের একিরকম সাজ,

ফুলেতেই সেই সুরেলা মৌমাছি ৷

শেষের কাছে শুরুর মিছে কথা,

শুরুর সাথে শেষের নৃত্যগান,

সবই বুঝি নিত্য সুরে বাধা,

তালের সাথে গতির অভিযান ৷

The English translation of the poem is Pursuit, posted here. 

Affluence flowers as lotus

Money and wealth, in essence

Coagulate in our brain,

Clot as hard dirt, filth, all in vain.

Until the firmness unites, melts into affluence,

From the same dirt, filth just the same,

They choose to resurrect with pride, without shame.

The united one, flowers as lotus,

Ceaselessly flows from our brains to our hearts.

Conflict

Conflict, a deadly weapon, ghastly

Routed deep, mellowed as an entertainment

Intelligence, pray you play your flute gently

And tune us a way out, from this predicament.

Of lizards

Lizard lies

In the branches

Hiding and writing stories

In human minds

Of changing times

Nature's wings

Crow mothers

Cuckoo sings

Human wanders

In nature's wings

Of war and peace

Scarecrow is to birds

As war is to peace

At cross purposes

Scarecrows

Bird-watch

Crops hatch

Starving grows

Of flowers

Lotus appears in ponds

Rose comes with thorns

Same stories from same stalks

Mere flowers

They know little of words

But to exist and perish, for lovers

Here's to the Peoples of the World

Weapons rain,

Intelligence cries.

Wars refrain,

Destruction lies.

The world floods

With obliging bloods.

Drop the guns, the world says

But arms everyone buys and sells.

Power with arms, a primitive style

Thoughts crucified, in history’s file.

233 countries? 6 continents! Such a small number

Yet unable to wake up, from their condemned slumber.

When People would be up with their peaceful power

In an hour they’d ruin, the need to kill and war.

Leaders will follow the Peoples of the World,

Intelligence will smile, glowing and kind

Weapons will rust until they're blurred 

Until they drain and wither from the minds.

Being wrong

Two counties fight.

Two faiths rage war.

Each has a reason sound and strong,

Both think they are in the right

And probably, they most certainly are

To think that war is not wrong.

Is then being right the poisonous germ,

That kills and destroys our rightful peace?

Of what use then is this delinquent sperm,

That grays our right to infinite bliss!

If being right pollutes and corrupts the air,

Being wrong then is correct and fair.

It’d null the weapons, denounce the war

To deliver history’s most insistent scar.

Ways

For an untrained world,

wealth and sex

breed war.

For a trained world,

peace

Frills

Clouds

Have come down to my neck and my knees,

Like frills

I see my frozen brain in them, once heavy and loud

Now floating, relaxed

In them I see my world, covered.

Soon it will rain,

To celebrate my last tear dance,

And then

All monotonous beginnings

Will end

Every bit of my world,

With a new and fresh focus

Will plough and reap

Harvests of love.

Golden theories will wither,

Metal pages will vanish clear,

Lifelessness in the broken mud will disappear

And I will rejoice in the leap.

I will marry my world,

I know the world will kneel

For love, with my misty eyes

Let me enjoy the frills.

World is the only country

World is the only country,

earth, the only nation,

rest can rest, in space

for a change.