Eyes That Hold Tears

Your two eyes
Sleep on the two pillows
Of their pouches below,
The two vials of dreams.
I can't imagine
How many years you've slept now
While still dancing and singing
On the boughs of your cousin relations.
I wonder if you've ever wept,
For not to do so is safe
Lest a precious stone should drop
And make those two eyes dull and poor.

Spectre of Breath

The odour of your mouth
Departed into my memory like a soul.
I'm possessed by the intensity of your breath--
Even now I can masturbate,
Inhaling your moist pollen in air
Wafting from years long gone by.

This City Has No Park

'I'm to come back to you
Again and again,
Every evening,
For this city has no park--'
Chimed in lyric
A young poet of Chittagong,
Wistfully looking
At the beloved's hilltop house
From one of his three southern windows.

For the wily girl, I listened to him,
Walking side by side
In the parkless city's puzzling maze.

Blood

Blood,

the clour

of the baby’s cry

for Mom for milk,

the first since

breaking the tent

of the placenta

when the baby is carried

Downstream on the crest

of incarnadine –

fruitful blood, that is.

Blood,

the colour of the bullet head,

a metallic organ

singing of death

squeezing the natal tent

lending a liquid apple

the colour of the baby never born –

fruitless blood, that is.

Her Treasures and His Trinkets

My silver ingots lie rebuked

Beside the splendor of your bullion of gold

My glass marbles stop and cease their chimes

When your gems roll and begin their song

The more your treasures come to light and shine

The more my trinkets prove tinsel and turn pale.

An Invitation

You said you’d take me to the mountains--

(there we’d play hide-and-seek in caves and grottos) --

In stead of easy swims in the blue ocean

In the strange land where watermelon is the bloody staple

Smearing the mouths and lips raw-red at every meal

But, honey, what more ordeals are needed

After bruising, grazing climbs of steep you

For the proof of my hanging tenacity?

Haven’t we mastered yet the art of spelunking,

Like children let loose in the mansion of a thousand doors,

Delicately moving our spread palms and rooting fingers over each other?

A Prayer to my Beloved in the Levant

Before we enter the land of Canaan

We’ll take a naked swim in the blue Mediterranean

And a dip in the baptismal water of the river Jordan

And get converted to our secret religion.

I’ll make you my devi and high Priestess

Who’ll ask for nothing but a pure sacrifice of kisses.

My Beatrice……my Laura …….. my Light Empyrean!

Grant me a little niche in your holy pantheon;

This is your Dante’s, your Petrarch’s sole petition.