It’s carnival time today

Serfs and plebeians pour into streets.

Behold the giggling, decked up undertaker’s wife,

That man over there, completely soused, is her spouse!

He holds his pay tight in his fists and grins grotesquely,

See the sweeper there, lips reddened by betel leaf!

There he is—the constable—sporting a shiny wristband.

And look at that rotund young eunuch

—All merry, like dusky Abyssinians or Afghan revelers in the rain. 

Today it’s time to collect wages and bonuses and forget files.

Today superiors have trade place with subordinates

And mandarins have transformed themselves into mere clerks. 

The roly-poly slave and Kishorimohon Das

Sleep fitfully next to each other near the town reservoir,

Stirred again and again by the Mayor’s snores,

The hapless water bearer gets completely wet. 

The woman over there is a streetwalker,

Visiting town for the first time with her snotty-nosed brother.

That man there trades in lead, and there is the perfume seller,

He is the accountant, and he the treasurer,

And next to him on this day of intermittent rain is the petty thief’s no-good brother.

And there—leaning, bent by the weight of his imagination, as if in a trance,

Is the poet, the king of poets! 

This day all have spilled out into the streets and stroll there endlessly

—intransitive,Wrapped in newly spun silk.  

Original title “Aj Ullas Dibas”.

 Collected in “Nadikuley Kari Baas” 2001.

 Translated from the Bengali by Dr. Fakrul Alam, Professor of English, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

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