#Title

KA DINGA PEPO
KAISER HAQ
It is odd that nowadays
One seldom hears the words
Convalesce, convalescent, convalescence–
Another instance of thralldom to binaries–
Illness/wellness
And nothing in between?
We are so much the poorer
Without an interregnum–
Remember a convalescent Tagore
Amusing himself scribbling
Gitanjali (Nobel Prize, 1913)?
Convalescing from a dread disease
Thanks to a three-week break
Between Summer term and Fall
I reread (once again) The Magic Mountain
And google the wicked virus
And the words and phrases that ring
Like ominous bells
Spreading fear of the insidious thing–
The Swahili
Ka dinga pepo–
Cramp-like seizure induced by a wicked spirit–
Whence Queen Maria Luisa’s use of the Spanish homonym
Dengue, affectation–
In mockery perhaps of the patient’s over-cautious movements
Like the West Indian dandy fever?
More blunt, a Puerto Rican doctor’s
Quebranta huesos
Led to breakbone fever
While a signatory to the American Declaration
Of Independence
Suggested break heart fever
For the aftermath of fatigue and depression–
Such poetry in pain!
I’ll spare you the phenomenology
Of my possession
But if you hated–really hated–someone
And wished on them
The pepo of dengue–
Of breakbone–
Break heart–fever
I think I’d understand
Kaiser Haq is a Bangladeshi poet, translator, essayist, critic and academic. He is the Dean of the School of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).