Kaal (Eternity)

Thanks to Dipak Basu for the translation of this touching poem from "Na-Hanyate" by Maitrayee Devi. We welcome your comments and questions about it. Use this form for contributing your own translation of a poem.
Bengali Version
 An eternity enchanted my yesterdays,
An eternity haunts my tomorrows.
She gazes, with nothing on her but a brazen leer,
Tantalizing, star-strewn, gossamer garb.
Who encapsulated thus her shameless body
In wanton flimsy shreds, garish baubles,
And ephemeral treasures that nature's glory
Has bestowed generously on the earth ?
Who let the flowers blossom in myriad hues,
Aimlessly, in passive, loveless passion,
In her somnolent, sorrowful, seductive streams,
That scornfully search the oblivion ?
She has risen from a void, vacant ocean,
An evanescent, veiled, formless phantom;
Morbid shadows of heaving waves in deathly dance,
Invade and devour the vanishing shore.

(Our heart-felt thanks to Dipak Basu for the translation of this poem. dbmema@mail.axess.com )

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