Poetry
Translated from the Bengali into English by Shamsul Faiz
Man, I want to go to you
Man, I have knelt down to you upon the ground
With the sand-smell, with the sand-load upon the chest
I want to go close to you.
I want to touch the middle line of all.
So many summers have amassed upon this chest,
Extreme loneliness
So much aloneness is not good,
So much loneliness is not good,
Leaving the life of a vagabond,
I have bowed down to you, the human life.
That green calling, blue invitation
The unclothed baby pissing on the lap on a stool,
Playing with the peels of nut,
Childish quarrel, knitting wool with spikes
These are your human-nature.
Forgetting lonely travel on the hills and hillocks
This time surrender will be to beloved one.
With this sand-smell, with this sand-load
I want to go to you.
Man, I want to go nearer to you.
— —- —- — —–
Patriotism
Then the rose has no patriotism
If she scatters smell to all!
Following anyone, if she doesn’t bloom
In the royal vase!
Rather near the soil blooms the sensitive rose.
Then about her patriotism
The doubtful question will arise all around!
Sometimes dishonoring orders,
If the trees create cyclone!
Afterwards they will be called the traitors?
If they do not bow their heads
Like obliged and obedient ones?
Rather their green panorama is spread
Piercing the prohibited fence.
Then those trees will be so much unpatriotic!
Will all birds learn patriotism again?
So leaving their own songs they have
To learn the patriotic songs too!
If flying in the limitless sky
They sometimes forget
The geographical borderline of the sky
Then will the horizon rise questions
About their patriotism?
Or, this over-flowing river
How much love the country!
Then shall he be informed emotionally?
Yet she breaks the bank.
Float the dwellings,
Then will that river be unpatriotic?
Is the cuckoo unpatriotic if she calls
Anyone by name thinking very close?
Will the Bakul be punished
If she drops on a prohibited grave quite alone?
And if the sky easily gives him
The cool shadow, then will anyone leer
About the patriotism of the sky at last?
— —- —- — —–
How are you?
How are you? The injured poet of deep night,
How are you?
How are you, my poem left behind?
How are you, joy and sorrow?
You and you?
So many days before I have left you.
The moon of midnight,
How are you all? How are you all?
For long I am without your company
So much time in idle sleep, in diseases
In sinking I am lying,
I am lying,
Bathing you all, evening speaking
Praying passages of morning
Come into my memory.
O bird, the lonely cuckoo of spring night
You are onlookers of all nurseries of town every day
The overwhelmed lover of wine-shop,
Vagabond, addressless brothers,
How are you?
Woman, how are you? Tree, how are you? How?
Crop, how are you? River, how are you?
By your own nature you are poets till now,
Yet you tell for once,
You tell me, you tell, tell me
Woman, how are you?
Tree, how are you?
How are you, man?
— —- —- — —–
For You
I have won a fight for you,
liberation of a homeland.
Your smile, words of your face,
On that solitary distant foreign land
I have many associates.
Weapons, warships and other things were not to me
In my hand was your red rose of love.
There was the green grenade, secret mine of love,
Taken from your bun at midnight.
Maybe there was a golden jasmine
taken from your bosom.
In your land of love
I am independent and strong.
I had your blue barricade of love.
I have won a fight for you,
Liberation of a homeland.
— —- —- — —–
Illustration : Najib Tarek
