Junktitled #28
For Philippe Grandrieux IX / Épilepsie blanche (D'où viennent les images?)

Junktitled #27
For Anna von Hausswolff VI / Dead Magic II

Junktitled #26
For Katatonia III / Discouraged Ones III (Hope Waits at the Gallows)

Junktitled #25
Out of Cold Storage IV / Aucmadick (Resonanza Erranti)

Junktitled #24
Melancholia Mk. 2 XIX / Siebente

Junktitled #23
Ontopology XXIX / Rogue Eddy Concurrents

Junktitled #22
Ontopology XXVIII / Lorentz's Hidden Reverse

Junktitled #21
Portraits V / À notre mère

Junktitled #20
Portraits IV / Keine Grundlage für Glück (Flüchtig)

Junktitled #19
Portraits III / Vardagsnytt

Junktitled #18
Portraits II / Asynchronous Study I

Uentitled #222
For Codeine II / Gravel Bed (John thinks I've been sad enough, but I just can't agree, it's not so sad for me...)

Uentitled #221
For Codeine I / Kitchen Light (I'm so sad, I can't stand, I can't stand, I can't stand...)

Junktitled #17
Melancholia Mk. 2 XVIII / Haleine

Junktitled #16
For Lee Bartow VIII / She Throws Me to the Dogs (Dödens Landsväg)

Junktitled #15
In memoriam Olivier Messiaen I / Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité (Lointain)

Junktitled #14
Sojourn XIII / Aujourd'hui

Junktitled #13
For Philippe Grandrieux VIII / Un lac II

Junktitled #12
Nouvelle Analgésique I / New Day's Promise

Junktitled #11
Belongings Once Caressed I / Söpö ja Ihana

Junktitled #10
Affairs Mk. 3 XXI / Wild East I-93

Junktitled #9
Melancholia Mk. 2 XVII / Stellari

Dawn • Jibanananda Das

Personal Translation

Just like Shamsur Rahman, and a lot of classical and modern Bengali poets, I was introduced to Jibanananda Das by dint of school textbooks. If I recall correctly, it was in Grade 7 when the first Das poem got introduced to the students proper; afterwards, in each progressing year all the way up to high school, a Das poem or two were common regimen for students who hadn't stepped into higher education yet. The first impression was certainly striking for me, I noticed a profoundly intimate language in his works. Sometime in middle school, I came across another of his poems, a translated-to-English one on a newspaper and it was perhaps the time I got the incentive properly to hunt down a Complete Works collection. Although the national curriculum only had focused on the "romantic musings on nature's beauty" aspect, it's only a fraction of the sum. When I was reading his works in depth, I came across a bold collection of poems that can be categorised as belonging to high modernism and surrealism. And I was engulfed in the stunning breadth of a poetic lens where topics like phenomenology, metaphysics, political history were the norm, notwithstanding his popular "nature's poet" branding, with which the poet cast a glance over that which cannot be discerned by traditional prose. Further down the rabbit hole, I was all the more enchanted when I had come across some outlier works where descriptors like "absurd fatalism", "decadent Pagan sexuality" or even "cosmic horror" would not be too far off. Across this massive span, however, the attribute that remains constant is the unshakable sense of solitude. Although there are some differences, I think that Das' life and works were not very dissimilar to that of Franz Kafka. If Kafka had successfully prophesised the absurd bureaucracy and surveillance of the present day Corporate-Cabinet coalition in works like Amerika and The Trial, then Das had woundedly written the elegies for the final hours of Ouroboros in works like The Ancient Gods and Dawn.

Dawn;  

The sky's sprawl, although soft, is coloured of grasshopper's blue  

Around and around, guava and sweetsops' green, blurred as when some rushed on a parrot's quill.  

A lone star still hangs there:  

As on a rural mating bed, and the twilightmost of their girls, 

Just like her;  

Or the Egyptian femme who dropped a pearl from her breast  

Onto my blue tankard;

Back there, thousands upon thousands years back, on one such night—

Like that pearl, and like that night,

A star still persists on the sky.

Agrarians have kept fire alit on fields, all night, to keep from the cold—  

A fire red like cockflowers,

Yet persists beyond those figleaves' gallops.

In the worn light of the sun, the reds linger submitted,

They have turned, like a skinny starling's wish and blemishes.  

Under the cascading dews of this dawnbreak

The forest and the sky,  

Like a peacock's blue wings, 

Glinting in the bluest of blurs.

Dawn;  

All night keeping from the leopardess' grip, keeping himself from going beneath—

Under a starless night, 

Through the mahogany of darks, the stark forests of Sundari and Arjunas;

Going and going, 

This beautiful dawn longed for by this beautiful, brown deerie!  

Come down has he, for this dawn and all its alleys.  

And eating from the reach of dewed grass, severing them from mouth to mouth, 

A pommelo as if.  

He comes down again, on sharp infliction of the river's cold.  

A sleepless, tired body to render from its coldness to emotions,

Or to cut through the womb of the dark to this bright muse of lightness' weaving;

Showering them with euphoria of life.  

Under this blue sky, coming down as a golden harpoon, the sun's—

Or to be let though this stunt of boldest stupor,

Or to be resonated upon does upon does of this transient wild hearth.

A strange sound—

The river's light then red like red clotted flowers.  

The fire resonates again— comes down prepared deer's warm, red meat.  

Under the starfilled sky, on their railings of grasses: many a old story, many some old stories relain;  

Smoke of cigarettes,  

Crudely aligned picture of some men and their heads, 

Unsorted—

Some zig-zagged rifles— coldness— 

Tremorless, innocent sleep...

Junktitled #8
Melancholia Mk. 2 XVI / Justine

February 1969 • Shamsur Rahman

Personal Translation

Of all the poems that were included in the national curriculum for Bengali literature, Shamsur Rahman's Februrary 1969 was perhaps the most unforgettable. Even though it was abridged in the textbook, the beauty of its incantatory jolt resonates within me till this day. To me, the cadence is the most immediately arresting aspect of this poem, it has a cadence I associate with fin de siècle French poetry, minus the surrealism. Rahman was a poet of urban estrangement moreso than debauchery and decadence, but I can't help but feel this poem is reminiscent of Arthur Rimbaud's Les étrennes des orphelins. Regardless, the least I could do to crystallise this beauty was, of course, attempt translating it. Minute caution was maintained in order to remain faithful to the original text but helplessly, and decidedly alike, some of my tendencies towards unorthodox syntax and diction found their way to the translation. As Arseny Tarkovsky said, poetry cannot be translated. The highest a translator can do is establish a psychic communion with the original poet; therefore, sometimes minor hijacking becomes necessary.

Why have we come here? What's our drive?  

No scheme of bonus voucher here, no tug of endearment  

Scoff of a round table, jurisdiction's witchery— nothing, not here.  

A circus' timid sick tiger or its gymnastics,  

Neither a girl's flamboyance or hot-air balloon usurpery— nothing here.  

But why are we still gathered here?

I am faraway bastard teak's

Skeletal peasant: destitute and worn out.  

I am Meghna's rower, through storms and rains;

I am factory's labourer,

I am dead Ramakanta-blacksmith's eyebouquet,

I am soilsmudged yard's potter: detached and often irritated, witness of hollowed villages.  

I am a solitary knitter: never spoken Persian, knitted fabrics— obtuse and fine.  

A colourful cinema ticket,

Ashen like some faded medieval pot— sparse,  

An everlooming friend, mixing soil's endeavour in the fine knittage.  

I am tax department's gloomy clark— fly-squatter, running from the chase.  

I am student, bright-eyed youth,  

I am a new age author, Charyapada's deer leaps from my heart every hour; 

In my mind, Rabindric musings arise in new permutations,  

And unfold in this extreme heat of reality,  

In the stark blue of consciousness, many so dreamswans float on astral measures, invariably.

All, each nook of us,  

Why are we here? What is our obligation here?  

What is that tide which pitched us here, down here in the sun of Falgun?  

Maybe because of a certain call to life, we have made the outdoors our home, and our outdoors: home.

Life is but—

Driving the plow hoodheaded in the scorching sun.

Life is but—

Clasping the fresh harvest to your chest, half-dazed.

Life is but—

Rowing in the crowning, hilly tides of Meghna.

Life is but—

Feeling the warmth of fire in a cold, silent December.

Life is but—

Returning home alone wiping the factory grime from your face.

Life is but—

Buying doore saree from the market for Tepi's mother.

Life is but—

Immersing in the pages of book, in the hair of a female classmate.

Life is but—

Marching shoulder to shoulder to the rhythm, waving symbols.

Life is but—

Lifting your fist to the air against injustice, watching intimate weavings of light.

Life is but—

Laying your head on mother's placid lap, pondering many childhood memories.

Life is but—

Entwining patterns in little girl's new frock, braiding handicrafts.

Life is but—

Smile on brother's face, combing sister's pinpoint hair.

Life is but—

Tying flowers to your lover's bun.

Life is but— 

Lying on the hospital bed, alone with yearnings for recovery.

Life is but—

Drinking water sip after sip at the tap in the head of alley.

Life is but—

Standing in the line of ration store.

Life is but—

Distributing pamphlets like sparks, here and there.

Life is but ... ... ... ...  

Look! Again bloomed the Krishnachuras in droves, along the drives of the city, how solemnly!  

Sometimes in rackets, or sometimes while walking along, it feels like as if they are not flowers,  

But flashing bubbles of martyrs' blood, full of mnemonic scents;

Twenty-first's Krishnachura is the colour of our consciousness.  

Against it, flings another colour,  

A colour which does not bring serenity to the eyes, a colour which brings insolence,  

Everyday, in our minds,

On dawns and on dusks.  

Now the streets are littered with that colour, and the whole country is lodged in the grasp of killers.

Me, and many others like me,

Swindled day and night amidst the killers' abode,  

Some are dead, some half-dead, others are starkly resilient, turning and exploding into great rebels.  

Everywhere, humane gardens and Kamal forests are being skewered and scattered.  

Guess that's why even in 1969,  

Salam descends on the streets again, uphigh— hoists the flag.  

Barkat flabbs his chest in front of slayers' claws,  

Salam's eyes today are illuminated Dhaka,  

Salam's face today is adolescent, green East Bengal.  

Watched in the streets today, watched we all common men,  

Letters poured like stars from Salam's hands, falling ceaselessly from the indestructible alphabets.  

And Barkat speaks in deep enunciation, still seeping from the warrior's blood;

And the grief-stricken mother's tears— bloom flowers into reality's vast yard,

And the heart's unreached brunt.  

That flower is our lifeblood, shivering from moment to moment,  

Under the sunshine of glee and sorrow's shroud...

Junktitled #7
Kleptocratic Spectra IV / Glissandra's Hash Sequence

Junktitled #6
For Alison Goldfrapp I / Gatto Gelato

Junktitled #5
Ontopology XXVII / Minor Phantom Pain

Junktitled #4
Melancholia Mk. 2 XV / Vacancy

Junktitled #3
In memoriam Piet Mondrian II / Maupassant

Junktitled #2
Cupid's Embezzlement I / Monera

Junktitled #1
For Codeine III / Kitchen Light II (Light the Stove, With a Match)

Funtitled #110
Ontopology XXVI / Pivot sans Insurance

Funtitled #109
Whimsical II / Spacey

Funtitled #108
Melancholia Mk. 2 XIV / নারায়ণ

Funtitled #107
Melancholia Mk. 2 XIII / Litter

Funtitled #106
Affairs Mk. 3 XX / Concurrent Affairs

Funtitled #105
Ontopology XXV / Familiar Digress

Funtitled #104
Affairs Mk. 3 XIX / তেঁতুলের মতন ভালোবাসা

Funtitled #103
Melancholia Mk. 2 XII / Breeze

Funtitled #102
Melancholia Mk. 2 XI / Tether

Funtitled #101
Snuffsets II / Heaven's Discarded Angels

Funtitled #100
Melancholia Mk. 2 X / Hearthen

Funtitled #99
In memoriam Jonas Bergqvist V / Nackskott

Funtitled #98
Nowhere/Nothing IV / How Welcome is Death to I (Who Have Nothing More to Do but Die)

Funtitled #97
Melancholia Mk. 2 IX / Släpp

Funtitled #96
Melancholia Mk. 2 VIII / Geheimnis

Funtitled #95
Ontopology XXIV / La valise de l'étranger

Funtitled #94
Affairs Mk. 3 XVIII / এখনই নামবে অন্ধকার

Funtitled #93
Melancholia Mk. 2 VII / Alltid?

Funtitled #92
Snuffsets I / Gambit Surge in Invitation

Funtitled #91
Melancholia Mk. 2 VI / Lautanen