শুনেছিনু পুরাকালে মানবীর প্রেমে
দেবতারা স্বর্গ হতে আসিতেন নেমে।
সেকাল গিয়েছে। আজি এই বৃষ্টিহীন
শুষ্কনদী দগ্ধক্ষেত্র বৈশাখের দিন
কাতরে কৃষককন্যা অনুনয়বাণী
কহিতেছে বারম্বার--আয় বৃষ্টি হানি।
ব্যাকুল প্রত্যাশাভরে গগনের পানে
চাহিতেছে থেকে থেকে করুণ নয়ানে।
তবু বৃষ্টি নাহি নামে; বাতাস বধির
উড়ায়ে সকল মেঘ ছুটেছে অধীর,
আকাশের সর্বরস রৌদ্ররসনায়
লেহন করিল সূর্য। কলিযুগে, হায়,
দেবতারা বৃদ্ধ আজি। নারীর মিনতি
এখন কেবল খাটে মানবের প্রতি।

AN OLDISH upcountry man tall and lean,
with shaven shrunken cheeks like wilted fruits,
jogging along the road to the market town
in his patched up pair of country-made shoes
and a short tunic made of printed chintz,
a frayed umbrella tilted over his head,
a bamboo stick under his armpit.
It is a sultry morning of August,
the light is vague filtering through thin white clouds.
The last night seemed smothered
under a damp black blanket:
and today a sluggish wind
is fitfully stirring a dubious response
among amlaki leaves.
The stranger passed by the hazy skyline of my mind,
a mere person,
with no definition, no care that may trouble him,
no needs for any the least thing.
And I appeared to him for a moment
at the farthest limit of the unclaimed land of his life,
in the grey mist that separates one
from all relations.
I imagine he has his cow in his stall,
a parrot in the cage,
his wife with bangles round her arms,
grinding wheat,
the washerman for his neighbour,
the grocer's shop across the lane,
a harassing debt to the man from Peshawar,
and somewhere my own indistinct self
only as a passing person.

THE FIRST FLUSH of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping leaves of the forest.
The man who reads the sky cries:
'Friends, we have come!'
They stop and look around.
On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon,
the glad golden answer of the earth to the morning light.
The current of daily life moves slowly
between the village near the hill and the one by the river bank.
The potter's wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings fuel to the market, the cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture,
and the woman with the pitcher on her head walks to the well.
But where is the King's castle, the mine of gold, the secret book of magic,
the sage who knows love's utter wisdom?
'The stars cannot be wrong,' assures the reader of the sky.
'Their signal points to that spot.'
And reverently he walks to a wayside spring
from which wells up a stream of water, a liquid light,
like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and laughter.
Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf-
thatched hut,
at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and sings:
'Mother, open the gate!'