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Contributors:
Poetry and Essays:
Hassanal Abdullah
Roni Adhikari
Kayes Ahmed
Rassel Ahmed
Chak Amitava
Pallav Bandyopadhayay
Stanley H. Barkan
Nicholas Birns
Jyotirmoy Datta
Jyotiprakash Dutta
Caroline Gill
Nirmolendu Goon
Clinton Van Inman
John McLeod
Manas Paul
Matin Raihan
Hasan Sabbir
Naznin Seamon
Amiyakumar Sengupta
Letters to the Editor:
Maria Bennett
Laura Boss
Stephen Cipot
Joan Digby
John Digby
Arthur Dobrin
Kristine Doll
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Adel Gogy
Mary Gogy
Mike Graves
Leigh Harrison
Yvette Neisser Moreno
Marsha Solomon
Tino Villanueva
Bill Wolak
Letters to the Editor:
Babette Albin
Chandan Anwar
Mansur Aziz
Laura Boss
Rumana Gani
David Gershator
Caroline Gill
Isaac Goldemberg
Zahirul Hasan
Omar Faruque Jibon
Gholam Moyenuddin
Hasan Sabbir
Subir Sarkar
Tabrish Sarker
Bikul Hossain Rojario
Cover Art:
Ekok Soubir
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Shabdaguchha: The 15th Anniversary Issue
Poetry In translation
Nirmolendu Goon
02
So, does the body hold the mind?
Or is it the mind that peeks out of the body?
Fifty four summers has vanished and yet
The quarrel goes on!!
The war between mind and body
Leaves Batsayon torn in blood and tears.
Rational mind rules, the mighty mind
The body is thrown under feet
Self denial, the body loses the war
Master of self denial, Batsayon!!
The truth, the truth comes
Even though unrelenting days of hardship are over,
He knew it is the body and the essence of manhood
Not the mind, never the mind.
Mind changes and takes shape of the container
Mind changes over time, from place to place
Mind acts to survive the times, but
The body is still, ancient
The drive of desire is the truth
The truth that made Galileo unmovable.
03
The rice is boiling over
Rice will get sticky, oh so sticky…
Let it be, I will eat it sticky.
Don’t! My sari ahh;
The rice is boiling over
Rice will get sticky, oh so sticky…
Let it be, you stay here
I will eat it sticky.
04
Chondi Das, a poet of all ages,
He never read Batsayon.
I have studied him
Like there was nothing else to do.
Batsayon taught me woman,
Taught me lovemaking
The way to cum and cum again;
Life would end up at zero
The fame of poems does not even begin to
Compare with being in rapture,
Just once!
I got him only once but he gifted me
Millions of lives and billions of years.
06
Rape, the clear sky trembles with every thrust from the dark cloud.
Rain in the city? A joke I think.
Rain in country, where you walk in water, yes!
I found her there by accident of birth.
I came out of the womb, the sky was ripped open
Rain came as if in ecstasy,
Birth chamber coals wet and useless.
I can claim Rain as my mother,
Wraps me up in her enveloping embrace.
Rain in Dhaka, keep looking up
Empty sky makes my heart burst,
A song, maybe, a homage more likely.
Translated from the Bengali by Kayes Ahmed
Dhaka
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