ওটা কিছু নয় From 'That is nothing'

ওটা কিছু নয়

এইবার হাত দাও, টের পাচ্ছো আমার অস্তিত্ব ? পাচ্ছো না ?
একটু দাঁড়াও আমি তৈরী হয়ে নিই ।
এইবার হাত দাও, টের পাচ্ছো আমার অস্তিত্ব ? পাচ্ছো না ?
তোমার জন্মান্ধ চোখে শুধু ভুল অন্ধকার । ওটা নয়, ওটা চুল ।
এই হলো আমার আঙ্গুল, এইবার স্পর্শ করো,–না, না, না,
-ওটা নয়, ওটা কন্ঠনালী, গরলবিশ্বাসী এক শিল্পীর
মাটির ভাস্কর্য, ওটা অগ্নি নয়, অই আমি–আমার যৌবন ।
 
সুখের সামান্য নিচে কেটে ফেলা যন্ত্রণার কবন্ধ–প্রেমিক,
ওখানে কী খোঁজ তুমি ? ওটা কিছু নয়, ওটা দুঃখ ;
রমণীর ভালোবাসা না-পাওয়ার চিহ্ন বুকে নিয়ে ওটা নদী,
নীল হয়ে জমে আছে ঘাসে,–এর ঠিক ডানপাশে , অইখানে
হাত দাও, হ্যাঁ, ওটা বুক, অইখানে হাত রাখো, ওটাই হৃদয় ।
অইখানে থাকে প্রেম, থাকে স্মৃতি, থাকে সুখ, প্রেমের সিম্পনি ;
অই বুকে প্রেম ছিল, স্মৃতি ছিল, সব ছিল তুমিই থাকো নি ।
 

From 'That is nothing'

Reach out your hand this time—can you feel me? Can you not?
Hold on. Not yet.
Reach out your hand now. Can you feel me? Can you not?
Your birth-blind eyes see only darkness. That’s still not it. That’s just hair.
My fingers, touch them now… no, no, no,
not there—my throat. Earthen sculptures shaped by
venomous artists. That’s not fire. That’s my youth.
 
[...]
 

That is nothing

Give me a hand this time, do you feel my existence? Can't find it?
Wait a minute, let me get ready.
Give me a hand this time, do you feel my existence? Can't find it?
In your birth blind eyes there is only wrong darkness. It's not it, it's hair.
Here are my fingers, touch it now, - no, no, no,
- it's not, it's a throat, it is a clay of a sculpture
of a venom believing artist, it's not fire, it's me - my youth.
 
A little beneath happiness lies cut off headless lover of pain
What are you looking for there? It's nothing, it's sorrow;
It is a river with no mark of women’s love on the chest,
It has become frozen blue on the grass, just to the right of it, over there
Give me a hand, yes, it's a chest, put your hand over there, that's the heart.
There is love, there is memory, there is happiness, there is the symphony of love;
Oh, there was love in the chest, there were memories, everything was there, except you were not there.
 

To our workshop on Marxist Bangladeshi poet Nirmalendu Goon, attendees collectively brought decades of poetry translation experience, including from Bengali. Yet ‘ওটা কিছুনয়’—published in 1973, near the beginning of Goon’s long career and soon after Bangladesh’s war of independence—proved challenging. Startling images of throats and headless bodies lent an element of body horror. A fourteen-line structure nodded to the sonnet form. We debated whether to preserve some of the specificity of Bangla, such as a word meaning ‘blind at birth’, and whether a body part was a throat, a windpipe, or an oesophagus.

April Yee, Workshop Facilitator

Original Poem by

Nirmalendu Goon

Translated by

Shamim Azad and The Poetry Translation Workshop Language

Bengali

Country

Bangladesh