My Friend Subinoy

 
I have kept asking, endlessly,
Can one truly be a friend?
Subinoy said.
 
I turned aside,
my gaze resting on grey fields—
Will it rain today?
 
Beneath the tree’s root,
shadows weave the play of clouds,
a strange disorder, a pain.
 
The doors of suffering—
they open by themselves.
All my hidden fears,
I kept them close.
Living became harder that way.
 
In the western sky, tonight—
hope drifts, with pride,
without light,
swaying on the cradle of dreams.
 
I remain with an unbroken body,
surrounded by strange,
terrible friends
who only speak of pain.
 
Dreams burned
in the fire of despair,
and as they left,
I wondered—
can they ever return?
 
Subinoy said.
With a clay cup of tea at his lips,
his head leaned eastward.
 
At the end of endless roads,
lonely hands
hold lonely hands—
two-faced beggars,
wandering.
 
Sorrows open the window,
leading the heart away,
as if it were their vow.
 
I speak with trees,
constantly, tirelessly,
when I sit in my idle hours.
 
So many words we shared—
the harvests once grown,
ploughed across this field.
 
Their stories,
the labor-pain of love,
the sharp blade of the plough.
 
So many dreams rest
in every stalk of rice,
so many hidden sorrows.
 
But Subinoy says:
of the clouds,
we never spoke.
 
Can one truly be a friend?
On a field drenched in sun,
in the month of Baisakh,
when yellow air thickens,
humid, suffocating.
 
I have heard the wind speak much,
its restless silence
in leaf after leaf,
its terror unsaid—
they will come,
though no one mentioned them.
 
At full noon,
when shadows leave,
Subinoy says:
 
Let’s go home.
Can one truly be a friend?
The storm is coming.