My Way

Your talk, your language, your poetry
Tires me, tires me, I am heart-weary

You say I am as free as I can be
A single theme, a single life, a single way

This truth, this shaping, this extinction
Let my thirst my growth be various.

Let me be as richly profuse as I can be
Fly on freedom's wing to seek the drawn tattoo

This norm not spoken of, time's flow
Arrested rhythm, a rhythm faltering at velocity's fair

Let me speak as I wish
Walk about, a single door, come to a finish.

Eat Parched Rice, Read Paper Packets
This time not a fat-laden poem, or cooked rice
Eat parched rice, read paper packets

Daily life sold on these paper packets
By the kilo
Paper packets crafted by workers
Sold because of rice-hunger's gnawing
Because the world's poor labor without return
Paper packets float today
Even in our poems

Read paper packets, eat parched rice
Fly, fling around the rice for poetry's sake
This birth, that birth
Heedless of foes in every courtyard
Let's go then, like fat-free, spirited poems.

Two Poems by Dhaka poet Tridib Dastidar (1952-2004)

(translated by Sankho Raichoudhury)

Shankho Raichoudhury is a theater student in Delhi.