Jibanananda’s Ghost Tram
No respite these resplendent
summers, beads of light sweating
down streetlamps into gutters,
aarati cinders simmer in pistons.
You trawl your bone-dry fountain
pens along Kolkata's concrete
corralling orphaned strands
of moonlight, starlight, night after
night, but tonight no imagery
glistens. Each poet will write
their own hell. In mine, like yours,
I'll be condemned to beauty.
Brakes screeching malaria,
engine dust-gasping, the lone
mosquito who followed you to death
drumming in your ear, you pay
unending tariffs with lunar images:
full moon, a lingam's tip clinks in
the toll box—fee to Shyambajar,
but far cries from cliffs of crude
moonlight you dream of,
iron rails staked to grooves of air.
Full moon like a beggar's cataract
barely a single fare.
Did an image of the moon kill
you—paralyzed by an eclipse
of beauty? Or was it an everyday word
suddenly blinding: বৃহস্পতিবার?
Storm clouds massive as a god's
casket hauled beyond horizon,
scattered stars set up stalls,
but no more moons tonight, not
for you with those worn eyes.
Ashes of the dead wash
up on banks of the Kirtankhola,
banks of the Bishkali,
trail your tram in a kilometre-long
jute noose hungry for necks,
hound you with the same question
people of the earth once
begged: Jibanananda,
is there another world?
Yusuf Saadi's first collection, Pluviophile (Nightwood Editions April 2020), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is a reader for The Puritan and was an editor for Watch Your Head, a climate change anthology. Yusuf holds an MA from the University of Victoria and currently resides in Montreal. The poem "Jibanananda's Ghost Tram" originally appeared in Brick (https://brickmag.com) in issue 108, winter 2022.
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