Poems by Subhro Bandopadhyay
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Metal Poem
I tell myself to aggravate ferocity with those I had chosen to be worse with last year those I had toiled more to be hostile with this year Who put tongue against blade? Every day feet entwined by sun not submissive mornings but sparkling afternoons arranged my books before orderly rows of insecticides unwritten absences of buddies on the pages Would you traverse elsewhere? Effortless stops of choice descending from the bus alleys proximate, early arrival of stray-dog-catcher vans that howled by You watch the dreaded tremors of saved animals Every day, do you think about dad? hate the compulsion of going to work before the mirror, by not looking at what is aging by habit training Translated from the Bengali by Aryanil Mukherjee Of Returning I have constructed my movements Electronic music amidst apathy abrupt parrots Are winds ever clear and non-sporadic? Does any dust ever point to a direction? You can’t walk on these streets to ponder a descensus sticks, to your legs and with a sharp turn around, you realise the games have disappeared boats deserted on the bank and so what finally remains? A stream of words offer decaying testimony Do I know these streets? Home is an easy metaphor yet the fly in a moving train concerns me will it be able to find its hive? Who can? With a little arbitrary dusting the bag of my return is ready, soil and seedlessness ready to return to the bow-string this yellow universal flower in polite collision, but before that sleepy head writes in the train and it rains as it gets off Translated from the Bengali by Aryanil Mukherjee |
Subhro Bandopadhyay is a polyglottic poet who speaks four languages, including English and Spanish and writes in two. Closely connected with a whole generation of contemporary Spanish and Chilean poets, Subhro is also a prolific translator of poetry. He edits Podyacharcha, a Bengali poetry magazine, and is an associate editor of Kaurab. He has published several books of poetry in Bengali and Spanish and a short biography of Pablo Neruda. He was awarded I Beca Internacional Antonio Machado de creación poética (2008) by Fundación Antonio Machado and the Ministry of Culture, Government of Spain. He regularly publishes in leading literary journals in India and Spain. He received Diploma Superior de español como lengua extranjera from Instituto Cervantes, Spain, in 2010 and the Indian National Youth Literary Award (Sahitya Academy) in 2013. Subhro teaches Spanish language and literature at Instituto Cervantes in New Delhi.
Aryanil Mukherjee is a bilingual poet, translator and editor who has authored nineteen books of poetry and prose in two languages. Numerous anthology appearances include Future Library (2022), The Harper-Collins Book of Indian Poetry in English (2011), Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry (2010), The Literary Review Indian Poetry (2009), etc. Aryanil edits Kaurab, a Bengali language e&m-zine of experimental poetry and works as an engineering mathematician in Cincinnati, USA.
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