Bishnu Dey

1909-1982 / Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India

Already A Farewell Song

Already a farewell song ? Dear friend,
will you dry the stream,
and raise pale sandbars,
even before the full floods of monsoon ?
Will the current of hopes and questions
disappear into anaemic indifference,
leaving only memory as its silent and grey effect ??

Well this sadness suits you not. There is music
in your heart and senses,
it is your orchestra that plays in this world-wide gathering,
it lights a restless flame of joy in this festival of hope;
variations of pain, harmonies of death
are a part of this song of life -

Is it you who admits defeat! You,
intense, tireless and hard-working,
with a scientist's focussed passion,
a lover embracing the world -
is it you who sits without hope, silent and tired,
racked with hate and self-destructive indifference
at Koutilya's fake devious doctrines ??

Already a farewell song ? Dear friend,
turn your face, look, raise your eyes,
are there dead sandbars rising in the delta ?
Yet see the stream rush, compulsive, vocal and strong,
why do you forget the truth of that source -

That rushes fast and strong through stones in the mountain,
that flows radiant and wide through green sunlit plains,
the sun turning it to a colour of gold,
and it erodes land as it goes,
forever hearing, far-away but unmistakable,
the call of a blue blue sea.
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