IT is TIME for me to go, mother; I am going. When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed,
I shall say, 'Baby is not there!'-mother, I am going.
I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you; and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe, and kiss you and kiss you again.
In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves you will hear my whisper in your bed, and my laughter will flash with the lightning through the open window into your room.
If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night, I shall sing to you from the stars, 'Sleep, mother, sleep.'
On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed, and lie upon your bosom while you sleep.
I shall become a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into the darkness.
When, on the great festival of puja, the neighbours' children come and play about the house, I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb in your heart all day.
Dear auntie will come with puja-presents and will ask, 'Where is our baby, sister?' Mother, you will tell her softly, 'He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and in my soul.'

'WHAT OF THE night?' they ask.
No answer comes.
For the blind Time gropes in a maze and knows not its path or purpose.
The darkness in the valley stares like the dead eye-sockets of a giant, the clouds like a nightmare oppress the sky, and the massive shadows lie scattered like the torn limbs of the night.
A lurid glow waxes and wanes on the horizon,
is it an ultimate threat from an alien-star,
or an elemental hunger licking the sky?
Things are deliriously wild,
they are a noise whose grammar is a groan,
and words smothered out of shape and sense.
They are the refuse, the rejections, the fruitless failures of life,
abrupt ruins of prodigal pride,
fragments of a bridge over the oblivion Of a vanished stream,
godless shrines that shelter reptiles,
marble steps that lead to blankness.
Sudden tumults rise in the sky and wrestle
and a startled shudder runs along the sleepless hours.
Are they from desperate floods
hammering against their cave walls,
or from some fanatic storms
whirling and howling incantations?
Are they the cry of an ancient forest
flinging up its hoarded fire in a last extravagant suicide,
or screams of a paralytic crowd scourged by lunatics blind and deaf?
Underneath the noisy terror a stealthy hum creeps up like
bubbling volcanic mud,
a mixture of sinister whispers, rumours and slanders, and hisses of derision.
The men gathered there are vague like torn pages of an epic.
Groping in groups or single, their torchlight tattoos their faces in chequered lines, in patterns of frightfulness.
The maniacs suddenly strike their neighbours on suspicion and a hubbub of an indiscriminate fight bursts forth echoing from hill to hill.
The women weep and wail,
they cry that their children are lost in a wilderness of contrary paths with confusion at the end.
Others defiantly ribald shake with raucous laughter
their lascivious limbs unshrinkingly loud,
for they think that nothing matters.

সতিমির রজনী, সচকিত সজনী
     শূন্য নিকুঞ্জ অরণ্য।
কলয়িত মলয়ে, সুবিজন নিলয়ে
     বালা বিরহবিষণ্ণ!
নীল আকাশে, তারক ভাসে,
যমুনা গাওত গান,
পাদপ মরমর, নির্ঝর ঝরঝর
কুসুমিত বল্লিবিতান।
তৃষিত নয়ানে, বন-পথ পানে
নিরখে ব্যাকুল বালা,
দেখ না পাওয়ে, আঁখ ফিরাওয়ে
গাঁথে বনফুলমালা।
সহসা রাধা চাহল সচকিত
দূরে খেপল মালা,
কহল-সজনি শুন, বাঁশরি বাজে
কুঞ্জে আওল কালা।
চকিত গহন নিশি, দূর দূর দিশি
বাজত বাঁশি সুতানে।
কন্ঠ মিলাওল ঢলঢল যমুনা
কল কল কল্লোলগানে।
ভণে ভানু, অব শুন গো কানু
পিয়াসিত গোপিনী প্রাণ।
তোঁহার পীরিত বিমল অমৃতরস
হরষে করবে পান।