Expiry Date

Every romance has an expiry date.
Before kissing your sweetheart,
kneel and bend her body and touch with your fingers
the pointed follicles that lie
in the corner of her curvy waist,
as a blind man reads the Braille:
There is an etching — a concealed date.

Now stand up. Notice carefully again,
before kissing her,
a neon sign gleaming in her eyes.
It is that concealed date
blinking like the traffic lights —

Now kiss her. Furiously. Madly.
Often, and in the certainty of losing her.
For every kiss is the last kiss
before separation.

Every romance has an expiry date.
Read it yourself before a kiss,
as a blind man reads
the Braille with his fingers.

(This is my translation of a Bengali poem, titled ‘এক্সপায়রি ডেট’, by poet Ranajit Das)