Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Still, the eagle soars in the sky.
My sky hides its face behind the mist.
My dreams lie fallen, their wings broken.
My sky is blue. I cannot fly like a dove. Chains still hang from my hands.
There are no stars in my sky. No flowers bloom on the trees.
Even now, when I close my eyes, there’s exile and pain—front and back.
Seventy-five years have passed away my freedom. Yet I keep running alone in roofless darkness.
I am not well, O Freedom.
Your shadow has fallen upon my body. I float in the waters of moonlight.
Still, the skeleton of Partition throbs across my flesh.
I am not well. I have no sky.
No roop…..
Seventy-five years have passed away my freedom
And still, in the sky, soar flocks of eagles—
death warrants shaped like the tips of spears.
Recently Chitta Mandal
Once past seventy, gravity
starts to fail.
Life stands still
on a space station.
Now, like a kite, it only rises upward.
The thread of attachment has snapped,
the reel vanished.
Standing at the edge of the sky like a saint,
I silently keep saying:
Be well. O people, be well.
I am leaving.
Let love be cultivated across the world.
I can no longer pour water just anywhere as I used to.
Everyone is busy now,
even the universe, with themselves.
Fog clouds the eyes. Leaves fall
and drift in the wind.
The body of relationships burns to ashes in the harsh sun.
Still, out of habit, I knock on every door :
O dwellers of the world, beloveds of Facebook—
be well. Be well.
I float in the space station.
I am leaving.
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 masters of 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 social and democratic movements of bangladesh. He has 30 books to his credit both in original and editing. The subjects cover the folklore, feminism, rabindra nath 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.
