Poems by Syed Kawsar Jamal

The Magician
​
The boat sails through the veins of the Sunderbans.
A magician riding over the waves and making whispering sound
The engine pulsed while the Matla River expanded
And its curly waves drummed softly in our ears.
Mere onlookers we keep our eyes open. Always.
The Royal Bengal lie in wait in a bush, but we cannot see him
The magician showed us a crocodile while basking on the sand
Jumps in and disappears. A green island raised its head
And vanishes again. The tide gushes in like a pregnant tigress
That visits the locality to deliver her cub. We hear the still thunder
Of the voice- only to find footprints on the mud next morning.
The magician exudes happiness in his eyes.
What happiness? For we know where we go silence is shattered
And our dear magician disappeared like happiness and your smile.
 We walk along the banks. No animal faces, no magician
To take us through the jungle. We pray for the magic
For the magician too. He must jump out of water like a playful fish
Why don’t you join us, the mysterious and unknown?
 
 
Space
 
It seems nothing can be held back now, nothing at all
As if darkness of the moment is stilled.
There stands the moon, holding light in its hand, like a book
flipping open its cover-page of clouds.
I have seen within rhymes the creeping body of lightning
The laughter of sheer prose,
flashing past the horizon like thunderbolts.
Did poetry show itself by making mysteries alit in the dark?
It seems there is nothing called inevitable
When the ocean turns violent, birds return to the shores
As for me, it is its sob I hear in the dead leaves,
floating like my life’s own tales from the pages of an elegy,
 I wander about some symbols, grief-struck,
As the festival gaiety heightens, it is you alone it grasps.
All night long plays music and songs.
But at midnight, traversing light and darkness, tears and frost
comes desolate loneliness and grips.
Do you really believe that, in between, there is no other space?
The broken reeds of the piano gradually get vibrant again...

​
Translated by the poet

Born in 1950, Jamal has been writing in Bengali since 1970 when he was in college. He also writes essays and translates French poetry into Bengali. He has 11 books of poems, 5 books of essays on the subjects of Tagore, Bengali poets and French poets and 3 books of translations from French poetry.

---

---