Want a poem?

Excuse me,

It’s not on.

The pen is not a machine,

Nor are poets

Trained nightingales.

It’s not on.

Sir, you want to break my shell

For a pearl,

You can’t feel the pain

That makes the paper writhe

When you print couplets one by one.

Want a poem?

Excuse me,

You have the audacity

To demand a decorating jewel.

It’s not on,

So it won’t be done.

Hanging on

Now my bones have aged

And the spine is ailing.

Hanging on the footboard of a crowded bus

My nerves are frayed

When my grip loosens

When I shake

Like a raindrop

On a telegraph wire

It hurts terribly

To twist my neck and look back.

I still remember

That warning of the elders -

Never alight from a moving vehicle

Facing backwards.

Friends who once said

They would change the world

Lost patience

And are now busy

Changing themselves instead.

I am still hanging

With one foot on the footboard

My grip has loosened, yet I am lucky

I can’t twist my neck

To look backwards.

Subhas Mukhopadhyaya breathed his last on 8th July 2003. Born on February 12, 1919 in Krishnanagar, Nadia, West Bengal, he was one of the foremost poets of the modern Bengali language.

In the 1940s, his sensitive, socially committed poetry heralded a new era in Bengali poetry. He was among the very first to make the protests and hopes of common people the theme of poetry. His early verse inspired many others to adopt the themes of political questioning and social unrest in their poetry. Some of his best poems in the early phase –Padatik, Agnikon, Chirakut – were informed by his political commitment and activism. He joined the Communist Party in 1942, going on to become a wholetimer. Along with poet Bishnu Dey, he was the joint secretary of the Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association in Bengal, founded in 1942 after the murder of Somen Chanda, a young Marxist and member of the Progressive Writers’ Association of Dhaka. He was jailed when the Communist Party was banned.

Onwards from the 1970s, his verse became increasingly narrative and self-reflexive, examining his crisis of political faith with characteristic grace and irony.

He remained associated with the Communist Party up to 1982. In the later years of his life he disappointed his admirers by retreating from the communist movement and finally even going over to reactionary politics. However, his poetry continues to be his best epitaph, commemorating him in popular memory as a pioneer of progressive literature.