Two Modern Mystic Poems

I

NIRENDRA NATH CHAKRAVARTY

I can leave everything, but not the tree;
May it remain
Straight and simple, may the tree remain
In my life,
May it remain, remain ever wakeful.

I can leave everything, but not the river;
May it remain.
By the side of the tree, may it remain
In my life,
May it remain, remain ever wakeful.

I can leave everything, but not the boat;
May it remain,
May the boat remain upon the river, remain
In my life,
May it remain ever wakeful.

All I can give up, not you, O my pole-star!
You must remain–.
Tree and river and boat, when all are swept away in the black darkness,
Even then, do remain transfixed in the night sky.

II

UMA DEVI

The centre of this body is a sun
with its seven-winged flames.
Burn the strings of the body-the fire is pitiless,
he does not know, if it is soft or hard, high or low a scale.
He dissolves in the fiery heat the thin cord that
links me to the earth.
In the heavens of your heart
I am a flying light, a flame bird.

The pair of wings is loosened by the heat
The body drunk with the black smoke of gold
is sunk in a swoon
Both lie out-stretched, the front veering upward.

The wandering stars in the spaces are in flight,
in flight-out of sight.
The sun has absconded, the moon a handful of ashes.
Draining life to a pale emptiness, a bunch of roses
blooms in the crimson garden of the veins,
The pupil of the eye is torn out, the tired eye-lashes
droop down stilled.
Time trembles with the rise and fall of the breast.

Life with its wings of fire is a soaring light:
Your heavens are a cloudless beauty
Love and affection, memory and happiness
Are now a cascade of gold-dust, as though
drifting autumn leaves.

–Translated from the Bengali original
by NOLINI KANTA GUPTA