I

Baritone

Let us all go together, one and all,

Together into the cavern of the ribs,

Raise there a song of delirious sounds–

Red and blue and white, kin or alien.

Listen, the groan plays on:

Dreams as if possessed

Swing like bats on branches;

Is now the time for dance?

Come, let us all go together, one and all.

Let the streams meet in the body, one and all,

Yea, let the bones brighten up still more;

Let us all go around the Fire

And scrape and eat of the very Liver, the Muse–

Let us go, let us go, one and all.

–DIPAK MAJUMDAR

Trampling my own shadow

on a long, long path I came

And saw a river of gladness.

I pushed the bank with my left foot

And with the right landed into the boat.

Here a straw canopy over the head,

A wooden floor to sit upon,

A helm sure and certain,

an oar within reach

And a sail to unfurl in the sky,–

All were there:

A whole lung-full of breath

turned into a flight of pigeons

that found the sky

–PURNENDUPRASAD BHATTACHARYA