KA DINGA PEPO

It is odd that nowadays

One seldom hears the words

Convalesce, convalescent, convalescence–

Another instance of thralldom to binaries–

Illness/wellness

And nothing in between?

We are so much the poorer

Without an interregnum–

Remember a convalescent Tagore

Amusing himself scribbling

Gitanjali (Nobel Prize, 1913)?

Convalescing from a dread disease

Thanks to a three-week break

Between Summer term and Fall

I reread (once again) The Magic Mountain

And google the wicked virus

And the words and phrases that ring

Like ominous bells

Spreading fear of the insidious thing–

The Swahili

Ka dinga pepo–

Cramp-like seizure induced by a wicked spirit–

Whence Queen Maria Luisa's use of the Spanish homonym

Dengue, affectation–

In mockery perhaps of the patient's over-cautious movements

Like the West Indian dandy fever?

More blunt, a Puerto Rican doctor's

Quebranta huesos

Led to breakbone fever

While a signatory to the American Declaration

Of Independence

Suggested break heart fever

For the aftermath of fatigue and depression–

Such poetry in pain!

I'll spare you the phenomenology

Of my possession

But if you hated–really hated–someone

And wished on them

The pepo of dengue–

Of breakbone–

Break heart–fever

I think I'd understand

Kaiser Haq is a Bangladeshi poet, translator, essayist, critic and academic. He is the Dean of the School of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).