Abani Are You Home

Shakti Chattapadhya (translated by Sonia Amin)
Bolting the door the neighbourhood sleeps
I keep hearing a nocturnal knock---
'Abani, are you home?'

Rain falls here twelve-month long
Here the clouds graze about like cows
The sulking gray-green drain-moss
Grips the door---
'Abani, are you home?'

With a chipped heart, I drift off to sleep
Amid the stretches of a far-flung pain.
Suddenly I hear a nocturnal knock---
'Abani, are you home?'

Sonia Amin teaches History at Dhaka University.