Translated from Bangla by Munzer Talukder, cover art: detail from rickshaw painting.
This Book Full of Wonders
According to Mallarme, the world exists for a book; according to Bloy, we are the
versicles or words or letters of a magic book, and that incessant book is the only thing
in the world; or rather it is the world. —-On the Cult of Books, Jorge Luis Borges
Tapas sent me this book full of wonders in the middle of last year:
Published some thirty years ago, it still looked fresh as a lass.
Authored by a rustic couple, Mr. & Mrs. Narayan, it had travelled far and wide
From one reader to another until it reached my amorous hands.
Its cover was riddled with perpetual suggestions of primeval words
Hemmed in by wild smells and circles of pale red,
But in the backdrop, the ceaseless waves of green seemed eager to fly into the azure,
As if the waves were blurry wings etched with the fragrance of infinity.
A sensuous tilak kamod wafted out from this occult book once I touched it,
A Siren inviting to her verdant magical cave somewhere in the deeps.
The breeze of Decameron with Sadean scent gently blew over its pages,
And throughout their hours, maps of a thousand Arabian nights created ripples.
On some pages, a certain cosmic code pulled me onto other pages,
Showing me its black hole and its next of kin the twin spheres:
Are you, then, the mother of all books—the Ummul Kitab? ,
Governess of the World, bending over like the sky, you embosomed me as I was lying supine.
People might have leafed through it and left, or
Someone might have read a little;
But no one has ever finished perusing this book through and through.
Because the directions around the reader would perish in a slippery darkness
Amid the vortex of magical letters that arose from the book.
And they ran away so they wouldn’t lose their way in the labyrinth.
But I entered in its reading by the obdurate right
of a desperate affair. Pheromones sprinkled a mesmeric desire over every page.
As if the spirit overflowed with a cascade flowing deep beneath.
Many a time have I met this opus in the intercourse of reading.
Each chapter of this book filled with deep blue fire
Branched the abysmal floods of desire, and the God of reading came to life.
Between the thighs of the book grows a delicate rapport between the text and the reader.
Some other bath in life was there; I had risen a bachelor of sapient love.
The contents of this book were lain out
over every leaf and vein like a maze
Her words swelled upon a touch to the blushing of hairs,
Offered the sweet globes of undertows,
And, this universe, as it were, was churned today with the romance of my reading.
Were You who pervade the universe a secret opus in the Preserved Tablet—
In the thighs of God that stood as a lectern?
You came to me, or was it I who had descended
as a viscous Vatsyayana of dark Ayats?
When I touched you, it was an I yet undiscovered that I seemed to have touched—
I inside you and you inside me—
United as one, we realised in the miracle of reading
That life was far stretched: across hills, over the sea, and to the primal lustres of nature.
But my wife, green with envy, veritable co-wife of this book of mine
Had hurled it countless times into the flames of her rage,
And, time and again, I picked it up in stealth to put it back in my heart,
Until one day she ripped the entire book apart with an unparallelled
growl of fury, and hurled it up in the air, and said,
Make sure I do not see it with you ever again.
Pages of the book disappeared one by one into an intimate distant landscape
Like migratory birds amid howling gales—in utter dismay.
Only the fragrance of its words and shadows till this day
Haunts me with reason and somewhat profound unreason.
Spherical Penis and Rectangular Vagina
A football is the spherical penis
That is only desperate to penetrate
The heaven of a rectangular vagina.
The opponent is like the orthodox mistress
Who gives her consent to kissing and licking,
And even goes along with biting,
But wouldn’t like a score of ejaculation in her vagina.
She says, no harm if you shoot it outside—
Just don’t kill my virginity in front of a million people.
You know damn well it’s not merely a game, more than that—
The honour of my family, community, homeland, and the flag are on the line.
I will be shunned by all if my chastity is gone—
What the neighbourhood will mutter and whisper, have you thought of that?
Why bother? Who has ever thought of these in the bliss of making love!
What difference is there between someone aroused and the one intoxicated?
The lustful football races frantically in every direction
like a fierce fireball as the feet rub and caress it
in foreplay, aiming at the rectangular entrance,
Sliding through a slithery path of nutmeg fantasy.
We relish every moment of this social sexuality sitting in the gallery,
And with each love-making act, spectators explode into moaning.
Inclined to the Other
Why is it that I feel such red, protruding greed for other women?
Why is it that my craving for white women piles up like refugees?
Do you have any idea?
Why do you think I fancy other women more than my wife?
Why do you think other countries seem more desirable than one’s own?
Do those mellowed by this blemish know the reason any better?
Why do the clouds move farther and farther away from home?
Why is there no happiness without illicit intercourse?
O ancient elemental arcane Vatsyayana,
Why is the celestial seat in the carnal abyss?
Why does the longing intensify for treasures belonging to others?
Why does my spirit find transcendence in profanity rather than in piety?
Why is the mind lurking everywhere in desire of other women?
Why is the mind immersed in poems by other poets?
O Reader, the great soul, forever inclined to the other,
This poem was supposed to tell more in candour,
Better you append it on your own—
My accomplice, twin brother.
The Original to its Translation
In sooth, I belong more to you
Than I do to my own self.
At first you came along as a stranger,
Eager to figure out what I really meant.
Taking a stroll with me, you realised
My language is yours—
Both tongues speak the same when in love.
Then you came closer,
Touching my elusive physique, and
You tried to sneak into the quintessence,
fondling the bust and the buttocks.
My heart opened its door agape,
Sated with licks and kisses.
Then you came even closer.
Now, which one of us two was in other’s image? –
Tell me, my dearest, how would you reply
To this question! We have known
Each other quite well through our hearts
And through our tongues that partake of passion.
You have rendered me endless
with your love, endowed me with the power
To transgress all bounds, O my dear—
With words salivating and sentences in foreplay,
You have taken me into your arms.
The Fire
I, the fire, appeared in the genealogy of a star.
Come naked, if you like to be burning, burn in my pyre
Burn in my proclivities, without attire.
You won’t be burnt to ashes like a naked couple isn’t—
Consecrated they are when flames of foreplay and fornication burn.
Take my hands made of a lotus.
I offer golds of a heavenly madness. They are yours
Once you cross this bridge across ignorance and pretensions, and come over.
Would you accept this gift?
Razu Alauddin is a Bangladeshi poet, essayist, and translator. His poems and essays have been translated into English, Spanish, Italian, and Swedish. In 2019, his collection of Bangla poems came out in Ecuador as Secretamente he dibujado el mapa del deseo (Secretly have I Drawn the Map of Desire) in María Helena Barrera-Agarwal’s Spanish translation. Alauddin originally translates from Spanish and his translations include essays and stories by Jorge Luis Borges, interviews and autobiography of Borges, and poems by Georg Trakl, C.P. Cavafy, and Ted Hughes, among others. Currently, he oversees the editorial and opinion section at bdnews24.
