What passed across the poet’s face

Was the full force of estuarine mud

The total amnesia of a total disgrace 

A century of clerk-indentured script

The silences behind a baul’s eyelips

The crack of air in a jatra actor’s no

A wild smile on the doused ferryman

A year’s rain between Barisal & yes 

Colour’s intensity in an open mango

The flag of thirst on a hunger march

The river swaying between its zeros

All of these and never enough: life

Itself passed across the poet’s face.

What passed across the poet’s face

Was the full force of alluvial dusts

Absolute fiction in an absolute love

Turn of death that won’t forget life

The prayer-flag of a sufi’s ambition

A net-ful of boal stowed in the hold

A middleman cut in a bloated belly

A battleship of dalits sent out to die

A thorn-tree in the eyes of ten fish

A harvest of paddy lost to a torrent

The full ferocity of national debris

All of these – but far from enough:

Death itself stormed the poet’s eye

What passed across the poet’s face

Was enough to fracture all his life

What passed across the poet’s face

Was raw beauty in an insane mask

What passed across the poet’s face

Was love’s grace in all its disgrace

What passed across the poet’s face

Was too much for one man to bear

What passed across the poet’s face

Was just enough to stop his tongue

What passed across the poet’s face

Was life itself in a shattered house

All of this and more than enough:

Life itself stormed the poet’s face