Someone has, as it were, thrown away a dark net
and the town has become a trout in that net;
no morning, as it were, has ever approached here,
the town has submerged in an overflowing darkness.

The town seems to be the island of a fairy tale.
I wonder who are, like giants, snatching away
the ornament of the forehead of a teen girl
and devouring then the bone-marrow in rapture.

I wonder who, by tearing up the civilization,
are eating up finally its bones and flesh.
Hadn’t ever a single monk or saint come
amid this darkness here?

If it happens so, then you, o poet, take up the charge
and play the guitar of light in this darkness.

[Translation of the Bengali poem ‘Alor Guitar’ taken from the poet’s first book ‘Pronoyer Prothom Pap’ (1996) ]