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Telling Of Gnaw

Read this beautiful poem though only in translation about gnawing suspicion. The Bengali version would have Goswami's signature cadence that is evident even in two lines :

বাত্সরিক (Batshorik)
নাম লিখেছি একটি তৄণে (Naam likhecchi ekti trine)
আমার মায়ের মৄত্যুদিনে (Amar mayer mrityudine)

One Man by Joy Goswami

Suspicion comes and sits on his shoulder one morning,
Slowly with long, thin beak, it cleans his ear,
When his eye closed with pleasure— suspicion —
with a tweet entered
into the hollow of his ear,
and he did not notice.

Since then always the sound of the bird
beating its wings in his skull,
When he tried to hear someone instead
he heard that sound,
When he looked in someone's eye
he always saw the eye of the bird,
Waking up every morning he cut off one friendship,
In the night when he lay beside his sleeping wife,
checking his own body
He wants to examine it to be sure
that his wife is not sleeping with anybody else.

Translated by the poet and Skye Lavin

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