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.