Jalangi River

at Natun Sambhunagar

Jalangi Jalangi lingering song-singer
bringer of fortunes along your ground-gardens
sing in your kingliness, in your strong kindliness
sing in the language of morning and evening
of land-parting promise, of wealth in your wandering,
Jalangi changeling of stone-cliff and sea.

Where does the tune come from? What is the reasoning
Jalangi, that in a space of near-nothingness –
only the sea sucking water from mountains –
there is a oneness, and there is a godhead?
Jalangi Jalangi there is no knowing why,
songs have no reason, the singing is all.

Jalangi princeling of New Shiva’s Colony
(so in the English tongue), village of kingliness,
here in the lingering road is the lemon-tree,
here is the family tough as banana-leaf,
here is a final point to the day’s questioning,
held in the work and rest answering all.

Under a lychee tree poets were gathering,
first day of Baisakh, to christen the century.
Shiva, Destroyer, Creator, shall there be
more of the Nothingness from the West’s archives?
No, for a song was breathed in the Bengali tongue
touching the fineness of a new world.

Jalangi dream-singer of Shiva’s Colony
carrying the boat of the moon to far distances,
carry the dream-song of poets who came here
into the day of the far-distant future.
Through all the question-and-answering, sing with
the knowledge that sleeps upon one village road.

Singers of songs-of-art, doing what rivers do,
carrying a note of a natural kindliness,
do you know your own wealth? Jalangi Jalangi
take my heart’s fortunes past morning and evening,
night, and the open sea, out to where Nothing is –
still by this village road, still on this stream.