The news was,
He had been taken to the morgue
Last night—when the crescent moon had sunk in the darkness of an early spring night
He desired to die
Wife was sleeping next to him—so was the child
There was love, and hope—which spirit, then,
Haunted him in the moonlight—why did he wake up?
Or, he may not have slept for ages—resting in the morgue now.
Is this the sleep he wished for?
Asked Bengali poet Jibanananda Das in his 1938 poem Aat Bochhor Ager Ekdin (A Day Eight Years Ago), speaking of a man who went to the peepal tree in the solitary, impenetrable dark after moonset, carrying ropes, “knowing that human beings don’t get to know the lives of birds and dragonflies.” He tells the story of a man who was not refused a woman’s love or the desires of a married life. Nor was he ever under financial duress. Is it this normalcy that left him lying in the morgue? The poet hints so.
“I do know
Women’s heart-love-child-home–aren’t everything;
Nor wealth, achievement, or affluence–
There is an imperiled wonder
Playing out
In our blood;
It tires
Wears us out;
That exhaustion is absent
In the morgue;
He lies therefore on the table of the morgue
Flat on his back.
Esta historia es de la edición September 21, 2023 de Outlook.
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Esta historia es de la edición September 21, 2023 de Outlook.
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