বিবাহের অবিরাম বেদনা বিবাহের অবিরাম বেদনা: উরু আর জিভ, হে প্রিয়, এর সঙ্গে বেশ ভারি, তা দাঁতে স্পন্দিত হয় আমরা আংশিদারীর চেষ্টা করি কিন্তু ফিরিয়ে দেয়া হয়, … - Denise Levertov

Looking, Walking, Being

I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.
The eyes
Dig and burrow in the world.
They touch
Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
Not only
Visible present, solid and shadow
That looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
Of echo and interruption?
That’s
A way of breathing,

breathing to sustain
Looking,
Walking and looking,
Through the world,
In it.

As Andersen told it, the tale was not for young children, not even called ‘The Little’-just, ‘The Mermaid.’ It’s about love and grief, a myth of longing and sacrifice, far closer, say, to Goethe’s Parable than to any jovial folktale, much less to today’s manufactured juvenile distractions.

I was the first to see him, for I grew out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .