(This is a free prose translation of the Bengali poet Jibanananda Das’s celebrated poem of the same name.)
Yet, as always alone, I remain, wandering into strange centuries again and again with the same south sea fatigue lingering at the outer limits of my feet and shores of dense, dark seas mangled by now into meaningless memories of empires derelict as dust forming time’s greatest oddities where my life blood has mingled with sea foam in uncanny cities. But also as I beheld, I held the promise of two moments of peace then in the arms of my sometime, small town Banalata Sen.
Whose hair in deep glades like a dark shade cascades and calls. On whose lips my name like dewdrops on grass-tips, slips and falls. Like the shadowed shape of a hull-broken boat that has raced to the core of an island place to rest its crew, so for your half-remembered, pristine sculptured face long have I raced and grown restless for you. Restless for you to fold me in your ken For peace comes only when we might meet again. Winged-eyed, undisguised, Banalata Sen.
Finally at day’s end when the golden bird and its evening together fade into the return of firefly mist and fables replace the meaning of twilight with shadows, Earth stops. I feel the smell of bats rubbing nightlight into their wings and watch the darkness as it comes dancing in behind me and sings. Suddenly the transactions of all rivers too come faltering to an incomplete end. Yet, as always alone, I remain, face unfurled in my fairytale world without my Banalata Sen.