The New Face of Bengal

The New Face of Bengal
(Exiled Jibanananda)
 
I saw Bengal’s face once.
Now—
only the mask of men,
ashen, leafless.
 
At midnight a jackfruit tree—
its branch dangling—
not fruit, but a man’s body,
spinning slowly in the wind.
 
Scholars in silence.
Professors sipping tea,
poets turning pages of emptiness.
In the thickets of snake-plants
the shadows of brokers lengthen—
in alleyways,
clubs,
parliament halls.
 
Teachers sleep hungry under the winter sky.
The farmer gnaws at air,
ties a rope of silence,
hangs from the granary beam.
Humanity’s pulse sinks into the riverbed.
 
I have seen:
educated boys digging soil with rusted spades,
their futures drowned in coal pits,
their lungs coughing up centuries of dust.
 
Beside golden rice-fields
stand a thousand sly merchants
with their mouths red from stolen harvest.
 
I have seen:
labourers tearing off their names,
boarding night-trains to nowhere,
their children left weeping
beside broken tin roofs.
 
And the wise ones—
ghungroos bound to their feet—
dance like court jesters
before the government stage.
 
Bengal’s mother wanders,
barefoot, faceless,
through villages and cities—
her cry shatters the ponds,
spills across the rice-fields,
spreads into the sky like bloodied rain.