Fire Air Water

Fire Air Water written by Jibanananda Das, translated by S M Maniruzzaman

Fire air water: the primitive deities in their snakish humor
Blessed you with beauty---
What a horrible solitary beauty they blessed you with;
And cursed the men in touch with you with the lust of flies.

Fire air water: the primitive deities in their punning humor
Blessed me with passion to produce poetry:
As though I am fire air water too,
As though I am producing you,

As though your face is not blood, nor flesh, nor lust
But a nightly deodar island;
A desolate distant bluish island;

Nevertheless you are being used by the vulgar hands
And being dissolved across the earth of soil;
And I am being dissolved amid the shadow of stars over the distant island.

Fire air water: the primitive deities in their kaleidoscopic humor
Keep on spreading the seed of beauty,
The seed of dream on earth.

I ponder with surprise,
Where are you tonight?
Why can’t beauty recognize the shadow of the stars over the solitary deodar island---
The beauty of that lady of the earth?
By the vulgar hands her beauty is being used--- used--- used--- used--- used-
Being used--- used---
Fire air water: the primitive deities burst into laughter “ho ho”
“Being used again and again and turning into pork? Ho ho”

“Ho ho ho” my troubled heart burst into laughter too!-
Amid this terrible laughter all around, the dark sea seemed to bloom
With a dead body of the enormous whale of darkness;
All the beauty of the universe stinks like the dead body of the enormous whale of darkness,
Wherever I go, among the comets over those seas and oceans
How normal, how natural!