If rebirth be true
Then I know very well
What I’ll have to do.
To this very capital of Bengal
I will have to come back.
Both prose and verse
I have written so much
Writing a lot
Sins also I have committed a lot
For these
I will have to do some penance -
In my coming life
I’ll have to be my own critic.
If by chance, by God’s grace,
Till that time there remain some readers
Who will still like what I have written
My attack on them will be so ferocious
Right up to their ears
Their cheeks will become pink.
I am destined to be another iconoclast
I’ll have to be my own critic.
I’ll say, ‘All these are outdated,
They seem to have been plagiarized.
It also seems
I can write a lot of such rubbish if I like.’
It gives me great pain
When I imagine
What other hard words I’ll use
Even in this life I very much regret
Thinking of the cruelty of my coming life –
I am destined to be my own critic.
Today those whose words I don’t like
In your coming life
If you again become critics
When I shall abuse myself
You will spend your time only brooding
How best to protest with your pens
Against every word I’ll write.
Of this I am certain
In my coming life
I’ll be my own critic.
I shall write
In the assembly of poets
He is indeed odd
As odd as a stork among the geese!
You’ll write, who is that idiot
Who writes such lies?
I’ll call you ignoramus
You’ll call me atrocious!
Then what else we will write
For and against
It is best they remain unsaid.
