Time and love. The novel in verse. George Pospelow
Calcutta!
Daytime anew.
People must remain
alive, work for rice.
They
encourage
each other
saying cheerful words —
the language is still rich.
The city bawls
at the top of the voice
about its superiority
to the whole of India.
Oh, Calcutta!
On the streets,
is unceasing noise:
the uproar of cars,
the screech of brakes,
the squeak of rattling carts,
carriages,
the squeal of rubber klaxons
of never-ending rickshaws,
the popping of motorcycles,
the ringing of bicycles.
A stream moves at a slow speed.
At the center of the street
a cow begins to moo —
somebody took liberty
to drive into it.
No respect at all!
On the pavement
passersby
converse,
laugh,
whistle in every way,
struggle forward
through barricades
of peddlers, vendors
who praise without a stop
their watches,
flowers,
semiprecious stones,
what’s only not there.
A crowd around fakir:
all right, very well,
is that so? Oh, yes,
yes, yes, yes,
come on, go ahead.
In a heap of stinking garbage
pleased crows caw.
All pay no heed to beggars.
Pans and plates clank:
patties are fresh, aromatic,
and the dishes
are being washed
in the puddle.
Oh, Calcutta!
At a cleaner district are
notorious Calcutta brothels.
Kids of the prostitutes
live in the same place.
Scream of a sex broker,
bass voice of a preacher,
the groan of fighting wrestlers,
the flow of urine passed
on the wall – men’s privilege.
A dreadful swearing —
that is a drunkard stumbled
over a dead dog.
Out of a loudspeaker
all over the quarter
strikes up a Hindi song.
Bengali songs are here,
there and everywhere:
on the radio, at home, weddings,
thousands of concerts, only
in contrast to the cheerful Hindi
they are mainly philosophical.
Suddenly, the music breaks off —
Buuuuh-uh, power is shut down.
For a long time.
For hours.
Oh, Calcutta!
Playing went on by musicians
singing to the accompaniment
of a barber’s scissors clang,
ductile grinding of a whetstone,
howl of a sullen cattle.
However hard you may try,
you can’t hear rustling
pleats of sari of women
walking by.
Listen to it!
Better look —
then this sound would be
more graceful.
In the park, are
the fragrance of flowers,
the grumbling of pigeons.
Boys set up a clamor
and drove them away.
Pairs of lovers
on the benches
are not entirely as before:
not quite – emancipated.
Their kisses smell of jasmine.
Now, it is an echo
of the long-drawn-out
hooting of a ship
on the Hoogly river,
a branch
of the sacred
Ganges.
The railway station Howrah
and the half kilometer bridge
are Calcutta inside Calcutta —
you want to cast a glance
at the apparition town,
come as a tourist,
you want to see its beauty,
live there for a short while.
You cannot feel it right away.
Oh, Calcutta!
The rain
is a chronic
phenomenon:
splash-gargle of the drops,
squelch-squish of sandals.
What if it pours heavily!
At once, a babbling current
will wash off the sidewalk folks.
As so often is the case,
it’s bucketing down
or raining days and nights.
Be careful then!
Inundation!
A car is half sunk
in the middle of the flood.
A man,
an idiot in looks,
strikes the trunk
with a hammer —
Bang! Bang! Bang! —
what a jubilant revelry
of the elements
and raving madness!
Earthquakes happen.
One was from Burma-Myanmar.
A perambulator on the balcony
started to roll by itself,
ooh! It beats the