Without-11

She says: Words are frozen

What about crossing them?

Word-mountains

Courage

Frozen?

He carries the corpse

As he had written

Four years back

Who knows!

The corpse may tell him

A last story!

She says: She has burnt the corpse

A lilting birthday gift

It is difficult to cry with specs

They only add curves to the tear-tracks

I am no chaplin

Still does it rain without you!

I put on my dark sun-glasses.

Without-10

The first love-bite

With love

So lovingly hidden

Under the black locket

Is the body as oblivious as the mind?

The shared

Re-experienced

This time

Unshared

You gain your self

I lose mine

This time it will be a single candle

Right behind the wipers

Slogging it out

Light drizzle blurring the image

Of the streetlights

This is the birth of solitude

I gain mine as you lose yours...

Without 9 translated into Bengali by Nabendu Bikash Roy

প্রতিবার যতবার দরজা বন্ধ করেছো তুমি

কে যেন ঢুকে পড়েছে

এই ভাবে।

প্রতিটি দরজাই আসলে হা খোলা

সব কিছু ভুলে যাবার প্রতিটি স্মরণ

ও শরীর

শরীরের স্মৃতি আর শরীরেও লেগে আছে স্মৃ!

প্রতিবার যতবার দরজা খুলেছ তুমি

কেউ নেই

কেউ নেই কোথাও

কেবলই দরজার আই-হোল দিয়ে

অতীত দ্যাখার একটা দৃষ্টিপথ

আর দরজাটাও একদিন ক্রমে ক্রমে বুজে যাবে

...ক্রমে বা ক্রমান্বয়ে।

Without 6 translated into Bengali by Nabendu Bikash Roy

এভাবে দৃশ্য মরে যায় ।

যেন স্ট্যান ব্রাখেজের ছবির মধ্যে

একটি জ্বলন্ত নেগেটিভ , তার উদাসীন তাকানোয়

এভাবে তাকিয়ে থাকা মরে যায় ।

ফেলে আসা সিঁড়ি

মই বেয়ে

ফিল্টারের ভেতরে পুড়তে পুড়তে দেখি

এভাবে দহন মরে যায় ।

মরনাপন্নের মুখ ফুটে উঠছে চারিদিকে

অথবা কবেকার মৃতেরা

কথা হারিয়ে কতদিন

কত কম

বেশি

এভাবে কথা মরে যায় ।

Without 8 translated into Bengali by Nabendu Bikash Roy

তাকে ছাড়া বয়স বাড়ে না । একটা সবুজানো আলোয়

তোকে দ্যাখার

দেখবার

সকল অসুখ ঢুকে গ্যাছে কানের ভেতর

সকল কানে

ফিসফিস করে কবিতা বলে অসুখ

যেন একটি শেষ কবিতার জন্ম

এরপর

শুধু

অ

জ

ন্ম

অজাত

যেন তাকে ছাড়া বুড়ো হওয়া যাবে না ।

Without-9

Each time you close a door

Someone enters

Thus

All doors are potentially open

The mind forgetting it all

All in a jiffy

And the body!

What about the body?

Memories of it

In it

Each time you open a door

There is no one

No body in sight

Only a peephole down the past

The door closes on memories

Potentially...

Without 8

There is no ageing without her

The green light is all I see of you

Will see...

All unhappiness settling inside the ears

All ears

Unhappiness is whispering

A last poem

Last to be delivered

All else from now

Only to be undelivered

There is no growing old without her.

Without 7: Unpoetic Personal Releases

A new black dress

Unknown

You, even more so

The bench wants to go away

But you won't let it...

Funeral of love

With Tagore for company

No way of reaching out

All doors shut...

You have moved on from me

Life, move over

Over, I can't...

You, under cover

Let me take a bow

One last time

Time last

Lasts...

You won't meet eye to eye

As if eyes necessitate love

Eyes bear hate

All hate all over...

My ears are not funny

Will never be

My eyebrows, not so neat anymore

No more pats on the head

Or little twirls among the hair

Accept

Except

Do not expect...

Why this vain hope?

GO HOPE GO

DO NOT HOP AROUND

YOU BETTER BE GONE

I BETTER BE GONE...

What hurts more, dearest?

Banishment--declared

Or

Disownment--executed?

What hurts more?...

Sorrow with you at its end

No, only sorrow

No you at its end!...

You are only at wit's end

Mine

You be happy! that's it

Fine...

She giggles with a digital camera

Showing landscapes

What about mine?

Does she see them?

No, certainly not...

The same word RID

She has got RID of me

I am still RIDDEN!

The word roots are different

All too different...

You are being clinical

I am, as always, messy

Throwing a coffee cup into the ashcan

You go away, unseeing

I see on, at your back

It is all about a missed encounter

Is it?...

I am not a man of nothing

I am least

Of least

But you are even unmaking

The least

The thus-far and the so-called

Unbreakable...

I brought your bag

Our bag-couples

You did not

Perhaps yours is torn

Forever

Apart

Unstrung

You have brought a new one

You are all too new

I am the old one, all the same!

But then the same bags given on the occasion

Forming a new couple?

Possibility?

Too little too late

Is it?

Is it ever late?

Ever little?

Forever?...

Green on your nails

I, all too green

"Green" and "dying"

As Dylan Thomas said

Invert LIVE

And you have EVIL!...

Could not see your eyes!

Seeing eyes

Eyes seeing me

Never to be again

Only mine, looking at the back of your eyes

Looking always at something else...

It is going to be

VERY

VERY

LONELY

Dearest,

But it will not be LONG

And that's the saving grace.

Without-6

This is the death of sights.

As if inside a Stan Brakhage film

A burning film negative

Staring beyond

This is the death of stares

Stairs of the past

Walking on ladders

Burning through the filter

I at long last see

This is the death of burning

Everywhere throws up

A dying image

Or dead better still

As many years

Undone in words

As many

Or lesser still

This is the death of words