Seven Stars in the Sky

When this constellation of seven stars burns in the sky, I sit on the grass; the red clouds seem lost in the waves of the Ganga, drowned like dead birds, as the quiet devoted blue dusk of Bengal returns like a beautiful girl with the tresses of night to the sky — her wandering locks fall on my eyes and on my face — never have I seen her before on any of the roads of this earth that I have walked.
Her long dark tresses rain countless kisses on the many trees of Bengal;
I have walked the many roads of this earth but never have I known such fragrance
as from her lovely chignon: the soft smell of grain, fragrance of acquatic shrubs, the featers of a swan, the grass, the waters of a lake, a vague piscine odour, the cold moist fingers of a girl after washing rice, a rare grass trampled by adolescent feet, the tired silence of a pained fragrance from the red fruit of the banyan: amidst all this is the heart of Bengal — when seven stars burn in the skies, I realise this.
(translated from the Bengali by Pritish Nandy)