Roger McGough -- Vinegar

sometimes

i feel like a priest

in a fish & chips queue

quietly thinking

as the vinegar runs through

how nice it would be

to buy supper for two

Roger McGough -- You and I

I explain quietly. You

hear me shouting. You

try a new tack. I

feel old wounds reopen.

You see both sides. I

see your blinkers. I

am placatory. You

sense a new selfishness.

I am a dove. You

recognize the hawk. You

offer an olive branch. I

feel the thorns.

You bleed. I

see crocodile tears. I

withdraw. You

reel from the impact.

নীরেন্দ্রনাথ চক্রবর্তী -- অমলকান্তি

অমলকান্তি আমার বন্ধু,
ইস্কুলে আমরা একসঙ্গে পড়তাম।
রোজ দেরি করে ক্লাসে আসত, পড়া পারত না,
শব্দরূপ জিজ্ঞেস করলে
এমন অবাক হয়ে জানলার দিকে তাকিয়ে থাকতো যে,
দেখে ভারী কষ্ট হত আমাদের।
আমরা কেউ মাষ্টার হতে চেয়েছিলাম, কেউ ডাক্তার, কেউ উকিল।
অমলকান্তি সে সব কিছু হতে চায়নি।
সে রোদ্দুর হতে চেয়েছিল !
ক্ষান্তবর্ষণ কাক-ডাকা বিকেলের সেই লাজুক রোদ্দুর,
জাম আর জামরূলের পাতায়
যা নাকি অল্প-একটু হাসির মতন লেগে থাকে।

আমরা কেউ মাষ্টার হয়েছি, কেউ ডাক্তার, কেউ উকিল।
অমলকান্তি রোদ্দুর হতে পারেনি।
সে এখন অন্ধকার একটা ছাপাখানায় কাজ করে।
মাঝে মধ্যে আমার সঙ্গে দেখা করতে আসে,
চা খায়, এটা ওটা গল্প করে, তারপর বলে, উঠি তা হলে'।
আমি ওকে দরজা পর্যন্ত এগিয়ে দিয়ে আসি।

আমাদের মধ্যে যে এখন মাষ্টারি করে,
অনায়াসে সে ডাক্তার হতে পারত,
যে ডাক্তার হতে চেয়েছিল,
উকিল হলে তার এমন কিছু ক্ষতি হত না।
অথচ, সকলেরই ইচ্ছাপূরণ হল, এক অমলকান্তি ছাড়া।
অমলকান্তি রোদ্দুর হতে পারেনি।
সেই অমলকান্তি - রোদ্দুরের কথা ভাবতে-ভাবতে
ভাবতে-ভাবতে
যে একদিন রোদ্দুর হতে চেয়েছিল।

ee cummings -- somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

ee cummins -- in a middle of a room

in a middle of a room

stands a suicide

sniffing a Paper rose

smiling to a self

"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes

people are in real:imagine

somewhere real flowers,but

I can't imagine real flowers for if I

could,they would somehow

not Be real"

(so he smiles

smiling)"but I will not

everywhere be real to

you in a moment"

The is blond

with small hands

"& everything is easier

than I had guessed everything would

be;even remembering the way who

looked at whom first,anyhow dancing"

(a moon swims out of a cloud

a clock strikes midnight

a finger pulls a trigger

a bird flies into a mirror)

Agha Shahid Ali -- Farewell

Farewell

At a certain point I lost track of you.

They make a desolation and call it peace.

when you left even the stones were buried:

the defenceless would have no weapons.

When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks,

who collects its fallen fleece from the slopes?

O Weaver whose seams perfectly vanished,

who weighs the hairs on the jeweller's balance?

They make a desolation and call it peace.

Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?

My memory is again in the way of your history.

Army convoys all night like desert caravans:

In the smoking oil of dimmed headlights, time dissolved- all

winter- its crushed fennel.

We can't ask them: Are you done with the world?

In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other's

reflections.

Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this

centuries later in this country

I have stitched to your shadow?

In this country we step out with doors in our arms

Children run out with windows in their arms.

You drag it behind you in lit corridors.

if the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything.

At a certain point I lost track of you.

You needed me. You needed to perfect me.

In your absence you polished me into the Enemy.

Your history gets in the way of my memory.

I am everything you lost. You can't forgive me.

I am everything you lost. Your perfect Enemy.

Your memory gets in the way of my memory:

I am being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell:

Exquisite ghost, it is night.

The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves.

It is still night. The paddle is a lotus.

I am rowed- as it withers-toward the breeze which is soft as

if it had pity on me.

If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn't

have happened in the world?

I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me.

My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.

There is nothing to forgive.You can't forgive me.

I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.

There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me.

If only somehow you could have been mine,

what would not have been possible in the world?

-- Agha Shahid Ali

Carol Ann Duffy -- Words, Wide Night

Carol Ann Duffy -- Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I am singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.