The Departure**

Had somebody tugged from behind

Precipice just beside

Cavernous hole waiting with baited breath

It’s not that no one else had ever ventured this path
but no steps can be seen coming out from the crag

Yet the abyss beckons
beckons like night spread along a sodden path
in a voice that enchants
into moving on to a future with a lost past

The gloom returns
time and again
in the pale twilight

The last sign wiped out
a watermark remains
etching out in indistinct ink
a vacuity replacing the last departure

**A translation by the poet of the 10th poem in his original Bengali poetry series Kabandhakahini  literally meaning  “The Tales of the Headless One.” The translator is Alexander Jorgensen