Poems by Masudul Hoq
1. A New Spell on Charyapada (one)
Human body is an unknown tree inside flesh and blood
It spreads five sense organs of different missions
Beneath it, there lies eternity itself.
Only the restless mind stays awake
Amongst eternal sorrows and happiness.
Luipa realizes the fact in meditation
That Death attracts him more than Life!
2. A New Spell on Charyapada (three)
The vintner girl surrounds herself
Squeezing the wine slowly.
There are sixty-four arts and crafts in the body
The fiances become intoxicated in it
Thinking of the moon on the tenth day as a sign of love-making
They display their valiance of manhood in sixty-six sectors.
Tempted, humans run after immortality
And become slaves to wine in small jugs, and vessels.
Birupa thinks so while sitting in meditation
Happiness stands for a woman
And she lies in infatuation!
3. A New Spell on Charyapada(five)
Human beings are an illusory tree
It keeps flowing in the stream of Styx.
An irresistible trap lies between the shores of illusion
In between keeps awake the storm of waves
The solution of ferrying remains within the body.
If the illusory tree is driven away in the pursuit of enlightenment
The fabrics of light of knowledge
will help Bard to build a bridge across the river.
The righteous do not move either left or right
They keep walking in the middle for thousands of years.
4. A New Spell on Charyapada(six)
Humans are held in with deer-like frivolity
In a desperately-desired body
As if the deer is a foe to her own flesh!
Eternity is a weird hunter
Which surrounds the body with the spell of destruction.
Alongside desire, there is beauty in the body
To a flesh-eater, the flesh of a deer still equates to the charms of a woman
As it was in ancient times.
Vusuku knows if human senses find
the spirit
They are sure to reach the Eden.
But the material world is a bond of illusion
And the body goes after the reproduction.
Even in a thousand years of pursuit of knowledge
I could not find the nonchalant light!
5. A New Spell on Charyapada(seven)
Obstructed by the illusion of the moon and the sun,
The poet Kanu happens to be so weary;
I ponder why he remains so nonchalant in an infinite glory
In a world full of greed.
Illusion-oratory and soul are all three the same in the mundane world;
Why the body suddenly becomes detached by the eclipse of bodily enemies.
Those who came abandon the body behind
And there is none to leave us.
They still tend to go to the Paradise beyond space and time
I am sure it’s Kanui who can give one the real hints.
(Translated into English by Niranjan Roy)
