The House Of Shadows Poem by Rayhan Rhyne

1.
A cat haunted a shalik, playfully. That bird dies off before the eyes of some earth-doves sitting on the tree. The moment the jerking stops, the moment death approaches- in what an unknown restraint, the cat retreats, slowly.

2.
I was awaken in a house of shadows. The moment I wake up there, all the things around- that marble sword, the green eyes of envy, the false and the death keep watching me incessantly.

3.
The path I walk on, or I myself is the path from whose two ends come forth numerous gifts, joys- is it death who sends so many things for me? !

4.
The chopped corpses are searching their own hands and feet in the water-drum. On coming to this world, they have owned these hands and feet effortlessly. They didn't have to search them! In this drum, they fail to do it today.

5.
Wherever I go an apparition chases me. In the guise of Death, he keeps waking with me, side by side. When I saw him first, we exchange no words. He seemed to me a dumb animal. Now, we always talk to each other. I have known that our all words are only with him.

6.
Each me, moving slightly forward, crossing himself, can see, by looking back the dead 'me'. A stone cannot do that. The much lively 'me', hence, die in what measure, a stone does not die that much.

7.
The unique gifts death sends to me, in the guise of those gifts, actually he himself encroaches. That he comes, is perceived gradually- when all the things around decay everyday, when all guises keep falling off! Whatever remains then, remaining in me, in the guise of my pleasure. Then I perceive, I myself, is also a gift from death which he cares to send to none but me.

8.
Whatever we lose, death saves them with all possessiveness. Once, long after, I went there, in that haunted house, where a flock of kaathshalik used to roam about behind the kitchen-hut. I found no old women there, nor her custard-apple tree. The kitchen, which has been layered by earth, is calling someone in a very feeble voice; that sound reaches my ears.

9.
The dog, which died few years back, I saw last night in my dream. Today I saw him once again- in the course of conversation, when the old woman, the seller of saffron, was surrendering to her own death, the dog was licking her body!

(Translated from Bangla by Raihan Sharif)