আমি কবি, সেই কবি/ I am a poet

I am a poet

I am a poet, - that poet, -

Who, looking up at the sky with anguished eyes, sees visions of a fallen feather!

Abstracted, I look at the faraway rain blushed clouds!

What desire awakens in my heart at a sign from those silent blue lips?

The rain clouds in my mind overflow as I hear the season sing,

My soul drenched in frog song and wet weather.

Illusions intoxicate me and ensure that

I forget the end to lose myself in a dream.

What is this riddle that makes me look for answers?

Anklets tinkle; questions at every step raise a dance

I forget so quickly, the rule that says I must follow the limits of Fate

My cup of life brims over with the joy of happy whim.

Kissing each flower of the earth

Child-like, I fall silent in slumber under the rain tree

Over casuarina groves, in fields of peas and beyond

I fly like a parrot in the blink of an eye.

A folk tune mingles with the shore mists in the evening hour

From a carpet of sand, steam gently rises from the slow river.

In the evening watched over by a lonely star,

The strains of my beloved’s song seems to linger,

Here lie the broken stems of self seeded rice, the straw of crushed nests!

Here, the pain of motherless child and husbandless woman.

From afar, a sky poised on the shores of twilight,

Calls me while I work, it beckons me in the midst of play.

By Jibanananda Das