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