Month: June 2022
3
3 Poems by Monibhushan Bhattacharya in Translation
Monibhushan Bhattacharya was a major poet who transformed the language of Bengali poetry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His poems were published in famous literary journals including the Buddhadeb Basu edited Kabita, Porichoy, Chaturanga and Purbasha.
T
The Sound of Running Water
At 1:30 in the morning, Morgan wakes, rises from the bed, and pads over to the master bath for his nightly pee. After his stiff legs and an aching back––both from handling the luggage back at the airport, no doubt––ferry him back to bed, he lies down and listens for the tank to fill up.
G
Grab Bag
I remember how invigorated I felt during my first time reaching into that bag. Closing my eyes, I desperately swirled my hand around to try and feel its contents, pulling out a kaleidoscope. Peering into the hole, I shook it around some and looked back in. Colorful shards rearranged themselves into a new collage—magenta and royal blue. Lime green and canary yellow.
H
Horse Sense
Kate tells herself that today she is driving to find the quiet, to get out of town and let the houses and little feed shops and hardware stores thin and thin and thin until there are just the low-slung fences and the uncut grass, little farmhouses up on the sloping hills surrounded by leaning trees and rare shade.
S
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
Her eyes traveled over to Ezra to see if would go check on her, but he only smiled, pleased again at his discovery of this place. They were only a few inches apart in height, though Ezra was a tall man, and his slenderness made her feel too big for any space they were in together, even one this large and otherwise unwieldy.
O
Ode to Goibniu
Son of Esarg
the axe-thrower, smelting and pin-lining coasts
with bronze whirls, smoothed by Macha’s shawl.
Forger of tools, lately found half-sunk in peat
in a depthless bog, with his elbow crooked upward. The gases
preserved his jacket, the raised sinew
on his small finger, and the blazoned buckle he himself fashioned.