• On the Nature of Love
• The Kiss
• When and Why

• The saddest poem

• Alentejo Seen From The Train
• Meantime

The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
or with whom- of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith- that a lifetime's bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!
For your sake such miles have I traversed!'
All those others who come close and moved off
in the darkness- I dont know if they exist or not.

Translated from Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson. 

Lips' language to lips' ears.
Two drinking each other's heart, it seems.
Two roving loves who have left home,
pilgrims to the confluence of lips.
Two waves rise by the law of love
to break and die on two sets of lips.
Two wild desires craving each other
meet at last at the body's limits.
Love's writing a song in dainty letters,
layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips.
Plucking flowers from two sets of lips
perhaps to thread them into a chain later.
This sweet union of lips
is the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
 

Nothing with nothing around it
And a few trees in between
None of wich very clearly green,
Where no river or flower pays a visit.
If there be a hell, I've found it,
For if ain't here, where the Devil it is?

                (1907)

Alentejo Visto de comboio 

Nada com só nada à volta
E umas árvores à mistura
Nenhuma delas verdura,
Que rio ou flor não enflora.
Se há inferno, dei com ele,
Pois se não é aqui, onde diabo será ele?

        Tradução de Jorge de Sena

Her lips were not very red,
        Not her hair quite gold.
Her hands played with rings.
        She did not let me hold
Her hands playing with gold.

She is something past,
        Far away from pain.
Joy can touch her not, nor hope
        Enter her domain,
        Neither love in vain.

Perhaps at some day beyond
        Shadows and light
She will think of me and make
        All me a delight
        All away from sight.

        (19??)

        Intervalo

Longe, muito longe,
        Bem longe daqui...
Não há mágoa após o gozo
        Ou do medo fugir
Bem longe daqui.

Seus lábios não muito rubros,
        Cabelo não muito louro.
Mãos brincavam com aneis.
        Que eu pegasse não deixou
Nas mãos brincando com ouro.

Como ela é de outrora,
        E da dor distante.
Goza a não toca, e esperar
        Não pisa o seu chão,
        Nem o amor em vão.

Para além, talvez que um dia,
        Das sombras a arder,
Ela me pense e me faça
        Um inteiro prazer
        Bem longe do ver.

        Tradução de Jorge de Sena