Has Anyone Ever Loved Me / Abu Karim

Has anyone ever loved me? I cannot recollect if a cockroach or

an ant has loved me. Many women have walked away

touching my vicinity; they have not even cast an oblique

eye at me.

I have carried an empty flower vase lifelong with my

bare right hand. I have roamed across the localities of women

in this town with a broken basket in hand.

Never has a kind-hearted woman opened the bolt

of my unfulfilled heart with her gentle breeze of the loose end

of her sari. Never has a green hearted woman plucked a flower

to give me. None has covered my empty flower basket

with  fragrance of rose, nor with the sweet scent of tuberose

or shefali, nor with the yellow shawl of marigold.

Love is a Godly shadow; love is the falling down of a pure cloud

on dry nature. If love walks away keeping a distance of three miles,

you can have the sense of its movement.

You want to go far away from love in some complex tricks;

You cover a distant route, but love will bite you. Love will drown you

among the lily bushes as it will sink you up to your throat in a blue poison.

A python will drag you to it with its warm breath;

will you give love anything in return?

9 July 2005

‘আমাকে কেউ কি কখনও ভালবেসেছে’ কবিতার অনুবাদ

[Translated by Dulal Al Monsur]