Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
I am terribly afraid of war—
the way my two-year-old son trembles in terror
at the sight of his own shadow,
the way he screams even in his sleep :
‘Bogeyman, go away!’
How can I make him understand
that not every dream is real?
I cannot light a fire
inside the house of his dreams.
When the terror of war has spread its drool
across the floor of the birthing room,
when the shadow of a dreadful storm cloud
hangs over blood,trembling with fear—
how can I tell him stories of parijat flowers,
how can I pluck buds of dreams
from the garden of heaven?
This is me—
the wretched Chitt Mandal,
who once guarded his homestead like a yaksha,
in whose house every month was lived like Ekadashi,
who,with a brittle,bone-thin body,
once wandered secretly through this city of Kolkata.
On a terrifying night of war
my shelter was razed to the ground;
my khaki shirt was stiff with grime,
blood streamed down my back from bayonets.
Clutching my throbbing heart under my arm,
I ran through forests and jungles
in the hope of survival—
a man whom even acquaintances once turned away from
on seeing his face.
No one wanted unrest
to crawl into the house of peace that day—
not even this wretch,not even :
I am that soldier of palm-leaf armor
who,after fighting a war and spilling blood,
has today earned a home where I can sigh,
water for my parched mouth,
a few handfuls of rice in a filled bowl.
And my love—
she has peeled away her own flesh
to arrange this tiny household of ours,
where there is no affluence,
yet the bird of happiness spreads its feathers
and sings day and night.
There is also a fiery son
who roams boldly from one neighborhood to another—
how can I ask him
to dream of a burnt-down house, a homestead haunted by snakes,
where bones and skulls lie soaked in blood,
where the stench of burning flesh
sears the nostrils?
The war that steals away
the pure dreams of children,
that ravages a beloved’s home like marauders,
whose poisonous grip melts my heart—
that war,we do not want.
Now before my eyes float
the mangled bodies of forty-two thousand children;
in my ears rings Hitler’s
boisterous laughter;
before my eyes looms Eichmann’s murderous face,
from which torrents of blood
pour like rain!
No—no more war.
Come,let us join the march.
I am terribly afraid of war.
Raise your bayonets high—
let the dove of peace fly
through sky and air.
Let my two-year-old son’s eyes
be bathed in the moonlit glow of the sun;
let radiant grains of sunlight
spread across my beloved’s household.
And sitting in that very shade,
I will fill my lungs with pure air—a sky where there are no circling eagles,
no lashes of blood-sucking bats.
Chitta Mandal
India
Short biography
Chitta Mandal, a Bengali poet of Kolkata,west bengal, India. He was born in Bangladesh in the year 1952 and now a national of India. He is the double masters in Bengali language & literature and journalism. He retired from Rabindra bharati University as professor.He obtained his doctoral degree on the poems of sixties of Bangladesh and it’s impact on the Social and Democratic movements of bangladesh. He has 30 books to his credit both in original and editing. The subjects covering the folklore, feminism, Rabindranath Tagore, Derozio, Nelson Mandela, liberation war of bangladesh 1971, Dalit movement and literature, Film movement of Latin America and the women studies in bengali. His books of poems like ‘ জতুগৃহে স্বপ্নরথী’, ‘ রাজনৈতিক কবিতা’ and ‘ একটি নারীবাদী গপ্পো কিংবা খড়দহে কুরুক্ষেত্র’ gave him fame and honour.
