Bent on the Ground
It’s not mere turning off
but keeping the genius of eyes closed
from the attack of sight bent on the ground.
Eyes touch severely the edge of deadly blood.
Binding the Nature, it observes the depth both
women and rivers;
absorbs all the contexts of fish, birds, animals
and insects;
penetrating all the correlative theories, bringing out
strong witness.
Not within my brain, actually my adolescence is
sitting within my eyes
as if it were a tired green boy having a big bow at
his hand.
Yet in the boundary of my eye-sight,
I see my son dressing his hair in front of a whirling mirror.
Who knows whether it’s myself or not?
Perhaps it’s I who am parting the hair and setting it on the palate.
I have worn socks and rubbing the buttons of sleeve,
brushed the shirt. Perhaps the steady glass kid
would uproot his father’s age from the forty year.
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar]
Comes More Not
Keeping the stone of Paharpur on the left ,
crossing the canal if anyone approaches the moat,
never he comes back —– you knew it well,
nevertheless why did you allow him
to enter the heart of the hut?
They who used to dye your Shlka;
They who used to bring you cock-flowers
if you once reject their hands, they won’t return ever
in the village — you knew it well, nevertheless you
made them float
on the water of deluge.
They who used to call you witch;
They who used to address you cobra;
Seeing whom, the pitcher on your waist
got broken into pieces; seeing whom,
you used to hide your face
why did you allow them, then, to laugh
into the black clamour of the bank of your tank ?
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar from the book Sonali Kabin]———————————
In the New Year
The smell of rice hurts my nostril.
As soon as I get back my conscience,
I notice all the doors closed.
When I dare open them all,
the capitalists frown at me addressing as blind.
Blood within by breast gets silently injured.
My eyes are full of dreams for rice.
When I demand to have my dreams fulfilled,
the capitalists shout saying, ‘Wild! Wild!’
When I pick up scythe at hand to harvest paddy,
they cry, ‘it’s the most vile work!’
Yet the sun rises in the sky in the New Year.
A bird of eternal peace calls to me in my dreams.
Getting up from bed, now on the way
I look for that blue bird.
I don’t know where and how far she is.
I wish I were all day long her body-guard.
Had I surrendered my body to her in a solitary place!
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar]——————————–
Poetry Such As
Poetry is nothing but the memory of adolescence;
I often remember the melancholic face of my mother.
Poetry, the yellow bird sitting alone on a bough of Neem tree;
Poetry, my younger brothers and sisters, sitting sleeplessly
surrounding the fire of leaves; and the return of our father,
ringing his bicycle bell and his call ‘Rabeya Rabeya!’
Poetry is the southern door kept ajar which got unlocked
by the name of my mother.
Poetry is nothing but going back crossing the foggy way
across the knee—water river. Poetry, the Azan of dawn
or the burning of stubble; it’s the expanded smell of sesame
on the belly of cake, the acute smell of fish,
the net spread on the yard and the grassy grave of
my grandfather
in the cluster of bamboo.
Poetry, an unhappy teenager growing up in the forty six;
Poetry, the meeting, freedom, procession and the
flag of a truant school boy,
and the plaintive description of the elder coming back
losing all in the flame of tumult.
Poetry, the birds of pastureland, the collected eggs of
ducks and the fragrant grass;
Poetry, the lost calf belonging to the sad faced wife that
fled away snapping the rope;
Poetry, the decorated letters in a secret pad within
a blue envelope;
Poetry means Ayesha Akter, the girl of unfolded
hair at a village Maktab.
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar]———————————
The Foam of Wind
Nothing lasts, behold.
Behold how the leaves, the flowers, the old villagers,
the pose of rivers’ dancing, the brazen pitchers and
the fire of hookah
and the flock of grown up girls gradually diminish
like the monsoon of Hilsa fish!
The yellow leaves, sounding in the wind,
fall down on the droughty desolate land.
The foreign ducks too,
on whose bodies there are millions of bubbles, flying away
into the shallow blue cup of the sky.
Why doesn’t anything last long ?
The corrugated iron sheet, the hay or the muddy walls
and the undecaying banyan tree of village
get uprooted by the terrible typhoon of Chittagong.
The plaster splits and in the long run the mosque of our village,
like our Faith, collapses down with a heavy crash.
The nests of sparrows, the love, the twigs and tendrils
and the covers of books fall off twisted.
By the water’s bite of the Meghna,
the crops’ green scream of the horizon starts trembling.
The houses float, float the pitchers and the cowsheds.
Like the affection of my elder sister, the old
embroidered pillow also gets sunk.
After the decay of dwelling-houses, nothing exists more –
Only the birds, fond of water, flying in the sky,
wipe off the foam of wind from their beaks.
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar from Sonali Kabin]————————
Illustration : Najib Tareque
