Her sacred face —
by some beautiful river, in one lifetime,
I had met it,
like a lone mynah, or one who wanders talking to itself.
Like the croak a frog calls back to its own croak in the pond-water.
In just that way had I met her.
I had met her beneath some shimul tree,
borne on the wings of thick fog, in an unknown dawn’s dew.
Where suddenly appears, on the haor’s shore, a bare-bodied child
carrying, beneath the hijol tree, her sacred face, its simple smile.
I had met her
at the corner of some unfamiliar village’s dusk-falling field,
with the quacking ducks returning home at a young girl’s call.
Beneath a sky covered in deep rose light,
like the roof of some sandbar in the Lakha or Rongia river,
when the bamboo leaves rustle, speaking with the wind.
I had met her on some monsoon evening
on a path buried under kadam blossoms.
And for a thousand years her sacred face
has stayed awake, over this vast earth.
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