Padma meghna jamuna

PADMA MEGHNA JAMUNAMODERN POETRY FROM BANGLADESH

PADMA MEGHNA JAMUNAMODERN POETRY FROM BANGLADESH

edited by

Kaiser Haq

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PADMA MEGHNA JAMUNA

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Contents

Acknowledgements 13

Introduction 16

Sufia Kamal 25That Love of YoursLove-Timid

Ahsan Habib 27The Sea Is Very Big

Farrukh Ahmad 29Son of ManFrom “Naufel and Hatem”

Sikandar Abu Jafar 34My Dream

Abul Hossain 35On the Death of a Poet-PlaywrightThe HeritageSocrates

Syed Ali Ahsan 39My East Bengal

Abdul Ghani Hazari 41Wives of a Few Bureaucrats

Zillur Rahman Siddiqui 45The Progeny

Shamsur Rahman 47Freedom, You AreCrowsThis CitySo Many DaysMask

Alauddin Al Azad 53The Monument

Jahanara Arzoo 55Shabmeher, For You

Kaisul Huq 57My BusinessThe Wonder Bridge of Words

Hasan Hafizur Rahman 59Like a Denuded Barren FieldLook, in the Desolate Garden

Abu Zafar Obaidullah 61Kamol’s EyeEpilogue

Al Mahmud 63Eloi Eloi Lama SabachtaniThe Pitcher of TimeFingers of TruthFrom The Golden Contract

Mohammad Moniruzzaman 72The AnnihilationThe Love Letter

Omar Ali 74Hasina

6 • PADMA MEGHNA JAMUNA

Syed Shamsul Huq 75I Shall Have to Go OutThree Sonnets from Deep within the Heart

Fazal Shahabuddin 79A Familiar AlleyIn the Blinding Light of This Century

Zia Hyder 82Desires within a Casket

Belal Chowdhury 84Native LandOn Ekushey Book Fair

Hayat Mamud 86Portrait of My Native Land

Khaleda Edib Chowdhury 88The Vase Is Empty NowRice Sheaves This Alluvial Night

Shaheed Quaderi 91Rain, RainAt Each OtherThe Eyes of FriendsOne Splendid Night

Abdul Mannan Syed 99Moonlight Like a Ghost Stands at the DoorEach OtherStrange Serenade

Hayat Saif 103Make Me Cry

Asad Choudhury 104I Was Enjoying DreamingA QuestionGuessing by What I Glimpsed

Mohammad Rafiq 106Ekushey1390Startled

Rabiul Husain 110Rape and Remembrance

Rafiq Azad 111Chunia, My ArcadiaArt and HungerLoveGive Me Rice, You Sonofabitch

Mahadev Saha 116I was Looking for a FriendLife

Nirmalendu Goon 119This Day I Haven’t Come to Shed Blood

What Sin Would Redeem MeFirearm

Ruby Rahman 122Left BehindI Didn’t Keep My Word

Humayun Azad 125The Red TrainCurfew

8 • PADMA MEGHNA JAMUNAPADMA MEGHNA JAMUNA • 7

Abul Hasan 127An Uncivil PhilosophyCoalThe Crippled Patriot

Dilara Hashem 130Love

Sajjad Quadir 132Recognised Border

Kashinath Roy 134Noah’s Ark

Selim Sarwar 137Bangladesh: December 1973Confessional

Mohammad Nurul Huda 140A Big FarewellThe Cultivation of Love

Zahidul Huq 142Wish

Khondakar Ashraf Hossain 143TangoThe Victor

Zarina Akhtar 146EntityNo Directives

Daud Hyder 148

Sixth January, Mother’s Death Anniversary

Shihab Sarkar 151Days and Nights of a BotanistBuddha and Balmiki in Airport Road

Abid Azad 153My Poems Belong to No One ElseFear

Tridib Dastidar 155Terror

Shamim Azad 156First LoveTell Me What You’ve Lost

Abu Karim 158Bonsai

Hasan Hafiz 159However Far You Go

Dilara Hafiz 160So Many Days on the RoadGirls Beside the Road

Shahera Khatun Bela 162This Blunder Wrapped in SilkYou’re in My Core

Rudro Mohammad Shahidullah 163Smell of Corpses in the Breeze

Farida Sarkar 165What Love Is This?

Nasima Sultana 167I Was Asleep, I Was AlonePromise


Mahmud Kamal 169Meter . . . casually

Abu Hassan Shahriar 170Bird Flood

Masud Khan 171RainCarnival Time

Minar Monsur 174Return

Riffat Chowdhury 175Nameless

Taslima Nasrin 176Simple TalkThereafter

Rezauddin Stalin 178The Beginning

Sajjad Sharif 179Moonstruck

Tarik Sujat 180I Have Seen Time Walking by on Backward-Pointed Feet

Suhita Sultana 182Cataleptic Waves Within

Tushar Gayen 183Half a Life

Baitullah Quaderee 185Stop It

Chanchal Ashraf 187India

Tokon Thakur 188Mother

Shamim Reza 190A Quickened Night

Simon Zakaria 191What Happened to Three Friends Who Had Gone

into a Forest

Obayed Akash 193The Earth’s Sympathies

Auditi Phalguni 194Dream Girl, Come By

Farida Majid 196Inversion of a Convert

Firoz Ahmed-ud-din 198Dhobi Poem

Kaiser Haq 199Published in the Streets of DhakaParty Games

Biographical Notes 204

The Poets

The Translators 214

The Editor 216


Acknowledgements

For permission to use the material in this anthology, gratefulacknowledgment is made to the translators, whose names havebeen mentioned in parenthesis after the texts of the poems, andalso to the publishers/editors of the periodicals and anthologiesin which many of them previously appeared:

From Abul Hossain: Early Poems: A Selection. Translated by SyedSajjad Husain. Dhaka: writers. ink, 2006:

“The Heritage”, “Socrates”.

From A Choice of Contemporary Verse from Bangladesh, ed. M.Harunur Rashid. Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1986:

Belal Chowdhury: “Native Land”; Nirmalendu Goon: “WhatSin Would Redeem Me”, “ Firearm”; Mohammad Nurul Huda:“A Big Farewell”; Kaisul Huq: “My Business”, “The WonderBridge of Words”; Zahidul Huq: “Wish”; Rabiul Husain: “Rapeand Remembrance”; Daud Hyder: Sixth January, Mother’s DeathAnniversary”; Zia Hyder: “Desires within a Casket”; SikandarAbu Jafar: “My Dream”; Al Mahmud: “Eloi Eloi LamaSabachtani”; Hayat Mamud: “Portrait of My Native Land”; AbuZafar Obaidullah: “Kamol’s Eye”; Sazzad Qadir: “RecognizedBorder”; Mohammad Rafiq: “Ekushey”; Mahadev Saha: “Life”;

Fazal Shahabuddin: “A Familiar Alley”; “In the Blinding Light ofThis Century”; Zillur Rahman Siddiqui: “Progeny”; AbdulMannan Syed: “Each Other”.

From The Daily Star Book of Bangladeshi Writing in English, ed.Khademul Islam, Dhaka, 2006:

Belal Chowdhury: “On Ekushey Book Fair”; Masud Khan:“Carnival Time”; Shaheed Quaderi: “Rain, Rain”.

From The Game in Reverse: Poems by Taslima Nasrin. Translatedby Carolyne Wright. New York: George Braziller, 1995:“Simple Talk” (Also in Organica, Autumn 1995), “Thereafter”.

From Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women. Translatedand edited by Carolyne Wright, Buffalo, New York,White Pine Press, 2008.

Shamim Azad: “First Love” (Previously published in Boulevard,Spring 2006); Shahera Khatun Bela: “This Blunder Wrapped inSilk” (Also in Boulevard, Spring 2006); “You’re in My Core”(Also in Vellum); Khaleda Edib Chowdhury: “Rice Sheaves ThisAlluvial Night” (Also in the Mississippi Review, Fall 2006); DilaraHashem: “Love”; Sufia Kamal: “That Love of Yours”; “Love-Timid”; Farida Sarkar: “What Love Is This?” (Also in Vellum).

From On Behula’s Raft: Selected Poems by Khondakar AshrafHossain. Dhaka: writers.ink, 2008:“The Victor”

From Selected Poems of Hayat Saif. Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh,2001:“Make Me Cry”.

From Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman. Translated by KaiserHaq. Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh, 2008:


“Crows”, “This City”, “So Many Days”, “Mask”.

From Arts and Letters #3, Spring 2000:Nasima Sultana: “I Was Asleep’ I Was Alone”; “Promise”.

From Chapman, Autumn 1990:Rafiq Azad: “Art and Hunger”, “Love”; Shaheed Quaderi: “AtEach Other”, “The Eyes of Friends”.

From Crab Orchard Review, Spring/Summer 1998:Khaleda Edib Chowdhury: “This Vase Is Empty”; Dilara Hafiz:“So Many Days on the Road”, “Girls beside the Road”.

From the Indiana Review, Summer 2005:Shamim Azad: “Tell Me What You’ve Lost”.

From The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXI, No. 1, 1979:Ruby Rahman: “Left Behind”.

From Poetry, April 2006: Ruby Rahman:“I Didn’t Keep My Word”.

From Six Seasons Review, Vol. I, No. 1, 2001:Rafiq Azad: “Chunia, My Arcadia”; Shaheed Quaderi: “OneSplendid Night”.

Introduction

Studies of Bangladeshi subjects, cultural or otherwise, routinelybegin by stating that though Bangladesh – the People’s Republicof Bangladesh, to give its full, constitutional nomenclature – is avery young entity on the geopolitical map, it is a millennia-oldcivilization. The complete literary history of the country,consequently, is virtually coterminous with that of greater Bengal.In concrete terms this means that Bangladesh and the Bengali-speaking parts of India share the entire Bengali literary heritagethat had its inception in the Buddhist Charyapada, and over thecenturies grew to encompass a broad range of folk literary forms,from the devotional Vaishnava lyrics to gripping narratives likethe Manasamangal, before the impact of British rule “globalized”Bengali literature by infusing varied western influences.

Within this broad framework, the definition of what is specificallyBangladeshi literature is not as straightforward as it might seem.There is no problem with recent writings, of course: anythingpublished by writers who are Bangladeshi citizens is Bangladeshiliterature. The net can be widened a little to include writers ofBangladeshi origin who have adopted another nationality, e.g.,Monica Ali. But we cannot stop there, and as we try to extend

PADMA MEGHNA JAMUNA • 15

the net back in time our retroactive appropriation can safelycategorize as Bangladeshis those writers who belonged to thepresent geographical area of Bangladesh – e.g., Mir MosharrafHossain (1847-1917). But then in the twentieth century it getscaught up in the politics and ideology of Partition. Bengali writerswho opted for Pakistan, even if they died before the birth ofBangladesh, like the poet Kaikobad, are now regarded asBangladeshi writers. But someone whose family hails from whatis now Bangladesh but who opted for India, like BuddhadevBose, Jibanananda Das or Humayun Kabir, is not counted as aBangladeshi writer.

This may seem straightforward enough, but taking such principlesof definition seriously can lead to bizarre “manipulation.” Afterthe birth of Bangladesh it was decided that the new-born republicneeded a national poet as an aid to self-definition, and the choicefell on Kazi Nazrul Islam, even though his ancestral home was inWest Bengal and he and his family lived there as Indian citizens.The Indian government was requested to allow the poet to moveto Bangladesh so that he could become a Bangladeshi citizen andthe country’s national poet. The request was generously granted,the poet and his family moved to Dhaka and until his death in1976 it was an occasional media event to see him amidst admirers– garlanded but silent, staring blankly, for he had long since losthis mental faculties, since 1942 in fact.

Be that as it may, the adoption of Kazi Nazrul Islam as the nationalpoet of Bangladesh gives us a useful historical marker for definingBangladeshi poetry. For all practical purposes we may regard whatis specifically Bangladeshi poetry within the broad tradition ofBengali poetry to begin with him. As a landmark he also servesto define the scope of the present anthology, for modernBangladeshi poetry can also be loosely described as that of the

post-Nazrul era, which may be said to have begun when the poetwent out of his mind – in 1942. We have therefore left outJasimuddin, a rare example of a poet with a modern educationwho wrote entirely in a manner organically related to the region’sfolk tradition, since he began writing in the 1920s. An exceptionhas been made in the case of Sufia Kamal (1911-1999), whosefirst collection of poems came out in 1938, because it was fromthe 1950s onwards that she really began to make her presencefelt as a poet and, more importantly perhaps, a cultural activist.

It is fitting that Sufia Kamal should be the earliest of the poets inthis anthology, for she is something of a transitional figure. Herpoetic mode is late-Romantic, pre-modern, even though in herlong and fruitful career she was ever alive to the significance ofthe historical forces impacting on our society. All the other poetshave, in varying degrees, been shaped by modernist andcontemporary movements, which have been global in theirimpact.

The earliest of these emerged in the 1940s, in the wake of themodernist movement in Bengali poetry, spearheaded by the fivegreat figures in the post-Tagore era – Jibanananda Das,Sudhindranath Datta, Amiya Chakravarty, Bishnu De andBuddhadev Bose. These poets, and a few of their youngercontemporaries, like Premendra Mitra and Samar Sen, wereregarded as exemplars by the first generation of modernBangladeshi poets, notable among whom were Ahsan Habib,Farrukh Ahmed, Abul Hossain and Syed Ali Ahsan.

Among them Farrukh Ahmed can be distinguished by thedefinitive impact of Partition politics on his sensibility.Interestingly, this came after a phase of youthful socialism in the1930s. As the independence movement split along communal


lines, he came to identify himself more and more with Islamicand especially Perso-Arabic culture. His interest in Arab cultureextended into pre-Islamic times, as is witnessed in his use of thelegends of Hatem Tai. Farrukh Ahmed, however, stands apartfrom a number of other poets inspired by Islam and the ideologyof Pakistan, like Talim Husain, Mufakkharul Islam, Abdur RashidWasekpuri or Raushan Yazdani, who, as Professor Zillur RahmanSiddiqui has pointed out, “lack the first requisite of a modernpoet, the ability to write a kind of verse which has profited fromthe technical developments already achieved.”

Of the other modern poets mentioned above, Abul Hossain isgenerally regarded as the most accomplished and urbane. AhsanHabib has been influential both as a poet and a literary editor,and Syed Ali Ahsan, probably, more as a critic than a poet. Agrowing number of younger poets emerged in the wake of thePartition of 1947, within three years of which an anthology titledNatun Kavita (“New Poetry”), edited by Ashraf Siddiqui andAbdur Rashid Khan appeared to present them to a somewhatuncomprehending public – for in East Pakistan modern poetrywas still something novel, and to some, an outrageous violationof literary decorum. Professor Harunur Rashid rightly commentson this anthology, that “It failed to initiate a movement but itwas the first puff of fresh wind and had projected a poet, ShamsurRahman, who was to become a major figure within the next twodecades.”

It has now become customary – and with good reason too – toregard Shamsur Rahman as the leading light of a group of poetswho emerged in the 1950s; among them were Hasan HafizurRahman, Syed Shamsul Huq, Al Mahmud, Fazal Shahabuddinand Shaheed Quaderi. In the steadily expanding provincialmetropolis of Dhaka these poets and a number of others among

their contemporaries assiduously cultivated literary modernism.In this they differed somewhat from their contemporaries inKolkata, who had swerved away from modernism to look formore accessible poetic modes. Shaheed Quaderi, who was bornin Kolkata and emigrated to Dhaka with his family as a smallboy, is perhaps the most conspicuously modern voice among theBangladeshi poets.

Shamsur Rahman is so far the only Bangladeshi poet who hasbeen acclaimed as the leading Bengali poet of a generation:William Radice in an obituary in The Guardian (London)unequivocally described him as “the greatest Bengali poet of hisgeneration.” Spread over more than seventy volumes, his poeticœuvre is remarkable for its versatility. He began as a “private”poet addressing a coterie, but even this had a political significancebecause, as opposed to the poetry of those imbued with theideology of Pakistan, the self-conscious modernism of ShamsurRahman and his contemporaries was accompanied by a liberal,secular outlook. Eventually, the voice of these poets blended withthe chorus of popular protest against the Pakistan government.Not surprisingly, their poetry became more “public,” more directin technique.

A number of interesting poets emerged in the sixties and becamean integral part of the tradition founded by Shamsur Rahmanand others mentioned above. By then the cultural climate hadbegun to register new influences, coming from the West as wellas Kolkata. The Beat Generation had appeared and its leadingpoet, Allen Ginsberg, had a long sojourn in Kolkata, where someyoung Bengali poets announced their kinship with him by formingthe so-called “Hungry Generation,” a group more conspicuousfor the deployment of obscenities than for poetic depth. A numberof young Bangladeshi writers, most of them poets, among whom


Rafiq Azad and Mohammed Rafiq stood out, named themselvesthe “Sad Generation.” The members of this group were inspiredby the various anti-Establishment movements then in theascendant – the Beats, the Angry Young Men, the HungryGeneration. These new influences were blended with those ofthe great modernists of the West as well as Bengal.

A rather piquant touch to the avant-garde tendencies in thecountry was added by a little magazine titled Na (“No”). Inspiredby Dadaism and avowedly nihilistic in its ethos, four issues ofthe magazine appeared, each in a unique and curious format: onewas bound in jute sacking and printed on brown wrapping paper,another was circular in shape. Drawings and graphics played asimportant role as texts. Rabiul Husain, who was prominentamong Na poets, continues to publish, but in a more traditionalidiom.

Later in the sixties, more young poets emerged, eager to epater lebourgeois, to the dismay of their parents and the delight of youths.Nirmalendu Goon can be regarded as the most conspicuous figurein this group, and alongside him the relatively sober Abul Hasanand Mahadev Saha.

By now the democratic movement in the country had begun tomorph into a nationalist movement, and poetry reflected thisdramatic development with great flair. The Bangladesh war ofindependence in 1971 too elicited an eloquent poetic response.Shamsur Rahman published a collection significantly titled, BondiShibir Thekey (“From the Prison Camp”), and other poets tooregistered their shock, outrage and militancy of spirit with greatrhetorical energy. A popular anthology of the poetry of theindependence war runs to 300 plus pages. The poetry of theindependence war was a fitting culmination of a tradition of anti-

Pakistani protest that began with the movement for therecognition of Bengali as a state language, which is nowcommemorated as “Ekushey,” in remembrance of the five martyrswho fell to Police bullets on 21 February 1952.

After the liberation of Bangladesh, with the victory of the alliedIndo-Bangladesh forces over the Pakistan Army, a new phase beganin the country’s history. Sadly, if inevitably, the romantic dreamsinspired by the independence struggle were rudely shattered. Asusual in such cases, the naïve had been led to expect utopia toemerge. The dire economic problems that independentBangladesh inherited defied whatever measures could be adoptedby the government. Left-wing militancy increased, and generallya mood of frustration and despair gripped the nation and foundits way into poetry. With the series of coups that have occurredin the country and the precarious fortunes of democracy, thismood has indeed become a lasting feature of Bangladeshiliterature. Lately the threat of militant Islamic fundamentalismhas become a source of grave anxiety.

We are perhaps too close to the literature produced in independentBangladesh since the 1970s to be able to speak about the youngerpoets with objectivity, but a few broad trends may be pointedout. There are certainly more women writing now than before –in both prose and verse – and this phenomenon is obviouslyrelated to the rise of Feminism. Literature as a whole perhapsevinces a greater interest in folk culture than before. At the sametime recent international trends like Postmodernism have alsomade a noticeable impact. A recent issue of the little magazineEkobingsho (“Twenty-First”), edited by the poet-academicKhondakar Ashraf Hossain is devoted to Postmodernism. Thosewho write poetry in a Postmodernist vein seem to derive theirintellectual orientation from Post-Structuralist Literary Theory


and post-Althusserian Marxism. How the young talents developwill be interesting to watch.

Although nearly all the poetry published in Bangladesh is inBengali, we should not forget that there are other languages inwhich some literature is produced by Bangladeshis. Besides Englih,there are more than a dozen languages spoken by ethnicminorities. This anthology includes a few poets in English, thoughunfortunately the other languages had to be left out becausecontemporary writings in them make only a fugitive appearance.It is hoped that in time the significant writers in those languageswill be identified and their works translated, both into Bengaliand English.

An anthology of this sort is always difficult to put together becauseof the tricky question of who to include and who to leave out.There are many more poets who could be in it, or even shouldhave been in it. But is not always easy to find translations ortranslators. That is why nearly all the post-independence poetshave been represented by a single poem each. I have tried to makeas comprehensive and diverse a selection as possible without farexceeding the limit of 200 pages that was mentioned by thepublisher. In selecting the poets, especially the younger ones, Ihave relied on the judgment of Mr. Belal Choudhury, who has amore thorough knowledge of the area than anyone else I know.The ultimate responsibility for the selection, however, naturallyrests on me. I have tried to make a selection from the best of thealready published translations, and have also included a fairamount of new, freshly commissioned ones. The names of thetranslators have been placed in parenthesis after each poem.

For Further Reading:

Murshid, Khan Sarwar, ed. Contemporary Bengali Writing: Pre-

Bangladesh Period. Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1996

— Contemporary Bengali Writing: Bangladesh Period. Dhaka:University Press Limited, 1996

Rashid, M. Harunur, ed. A Choice of Contemporary Verse fromBangladesh. Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1986

Siddiqui, Zillur Rahman. Literature of Bangladesh and OtherEssays. Dhaka: Bangladesh Books International, 1982


Sufia Kamal

That Love of Yours

I’ve taken possession of that love of yoursthat fills the earth’s vessel till it overflows,filling my eyes, filling my heart,

and filling my two hands.How unbearable is this joy, that this love is so intense.With the touch like arrows of its golden raysthe inner bud blooms, as quickly as grass.Illumined in my heart, it brings jewel-inlaid riches;that’s why I’m wealthy, my joy will not perish.With images ever new, this world has gratified me,given as it is to praise, to perfumed blossoms dripping honey.The diurnal light of sun, at every watch of the night,merging hour by hour with your love’s every letter, will set.Ever-new messages I hear;my heart is overcome – so in love I compose my answering letter.Warmed from the Sindhu’s expanse of river,

these clouds upon clouds of gentle moist airever bring these love letters, then carry them afar.The eager heart grows devoted as an unmarried girl,so it longs to compose scores upon scores

of ever-new messages of love and amours.The heart fills with joy, grows voluble,

so I’ve gathered hence,from the mortal earth, from the horizon’s expanse:

impassioned, illumined, that love of yours.

– Carolyne Wright with Ayesha Kabir

Love-Timid

Even now the night’s intoxication has not passed,eyes filled with passion;

the string of ?iuli-flowers in the parting of my hairhas wilted, the world is overwhelmed with scent.

I have kept the window-shutters open,extinguishing my lamp –

so the dew may enter and coolthe fearful outcry of my heart!

Dream’s intoxication in my eyes, in my breasta message of hope –

the distant woodland song, birds’ twitteringwill enter here I know.

Rising with a sudden start I see: my heart’s monarch,leaning in silence against my thigh – bedecked with flowers.He has bestowed heaven on my heated thirst;my weak and timid heart has trembled,

pounding full of love.



Ahsan Habib

The Sea Is Very Big

Do not ask me to be the wave of some vast sea.I can agree though if you promise that the wave of the seaWill but lose itself in the depths of the ocean andReturn again to the refuge of the childhood river.

I do not want to merge with the sea, forIt is vast, it has too great a pride,And I am afraid of it.

It is bent on devouring the riverin intoxicated ravenousness, but

I refuse to be its victim: onlyI can be its occasional companion

some morning, or,May even go with it to the far distance

some lazy noon.

Provided it gives me the pledgeThat each evening it will restore me to the quietRiver of my childhood, which I have seenFlowing in my body and soul from birth,

That when I shall watch my river some winter night,Sitting on its bank, it will fill this river of mineWith a new flood tide.

No oceanic cycloneOnly the soft drip-drop of dew, like a musical tune,Making the two bakul branches on the bankMildly quiver.

There is a stain in the water of the sea,And only pearl in the dew.That I will take.

My river, too, can one day be in the oceanRich with the weight of pearls, andThen merging with this vast human seaI, too, can, without fear, be one more unique waveIn the company of many waves,And then I, too, can fearlessly sing,Joining my voiceIn the universal symphony.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Farrukh Ahmad

Son of Man

The sailor is back after weathering many tumultuous storms.Many hungry nights and many sicknesses of the seaMade him giddy and restless. Many a timeDid he lose his way in the darkness. And the messengers of deathCalled him again and again from the dark waters all around.The twisted hold of his storm battered ship was filledWith sweat stained hopelessness of bitter failure.The dark fierce blue deep urged him on;Yet the sailor sought and has now found his homeIn the strange unknown land.

Though his two eyes are full of black nightmarish fearsThough the taste of death still lingers on his pale lipsYet the twisted hold of his broken ship is today vibrant with

victoryAnd all the cruel tortured memories languish behind.Son of man, the victorious Sindabad has come back,Overcoming many storms, with his rich merchandise.By the fierce sea in another strange land he has seen the home of

man, a living tomb,Where the dead desert mind of the proud reside, a farce

in frozen stone.

Row after rowLine by line,Move the band of load bearersMove the flock of beastsWith shovel and hammersWith pen and ploughs

Move the hungry lean backed childrenAnd numberless files moveLeaving behind deserts, fields and woods.In the court of manA farce in frozen stone.

Banding together the children move onLifting to their lips the bitter cup of life,Hungry, dying son of man!Materialism’sFrozen stony path,The path of this horrible civilizationFull of deep ravines,Cover up the sky in darkness and invite them.What battlement is this?Here only the hungry day’s flame bums,The dark fog of poisonous smokeAnd the gruesome terror of death.The heavy oppressed heart, the deep weary pain,And in their midst, kicked, afraid of Satan,Stumbles forward today the dead son of AdamInto the hideous grave,Into the complex abysmal depth.

The children proceed in a band to mass extermination.In the ugly false black dark road they go astrayWhere at every point Satan has his snare laid.Drawn inexorablyThe weak lean son of man moves towards that today.

On either side of the road I see hungry dead bodies of childrenAnd side by side I find the proud wealth of millionaires

overflowing.


I see terrible famine at the peasants’ door,I see burning on the forehead of the oppressed the flaming mark

of insult.Man, at the joking hands of the arrogant,Has become a slave and woman a whore.

Man’s fortress lies far ahead in the distance,Here is only the devil’s outer courtyard;Those who walk hereWander aimlessly in a whirlpool of confusion.Lured by the vile serpent of materialism

They are today but blind betrayed wayfarers,Sad victims of this century’s civilization.

Multiplying the number of the frightenedRaising the number of the fallenThey have joined hands with the killer of men and womenThey have become cruel huntersThe inhuman dead sons of man.The bond of chain protests at every stepThe breath of life stops.In the court of manA farce in frozen stone.NowNo more in this court of man, the symbol of sexlessness,No more on Satan’s black mudbespattered pathNow our appeal is in the court of God aloneThe appeal of the robbed hungry tortured man.

I know many civilizations have perished under dustI know many Pharaohs, many tyrannical NimrodsLie buried under itAnd now a band of new travellers appear on the hill fluttering

their flagThey bring with them the tireless typhoon of life.Today I hear their musicTheir victorious flag flutters today in the airI only hear their voiceThe voice of the mild soft heartsComing from deep vigorous chests.

Let him not be tired any moreLet him not be frightened again at the sight of traps ofoppression on the way,Let him not stray again,Son of man of the future.

– Kabir Chowdhury

From “Naufel and Hatem”

I have seen many sprawling meadows,Many deserts, fields, forests and crowded cities.Many strange lands have I seen. SometimesI have seen savage darkness swallowing up this world of oursLike that huge sea fish devouring the tired prophet Jonah.Sometimes again I have seen the moving sun,Bright and glorious, emerging from the prison of nightLike the freed prophet Joseph coming out of the dark well ofdeath.I have seen the sea bubbling with life, stretching from horizonto horizon,And mountains, standing erect, like the rocky spine of the truebeliever.I have known all and witnessed the rise and fallOf nations or crowds of men. I have seen


God’s vast creation. Many hours have I spentIn the company of the wise in many lands,And in the association of meditating saints.But still I find my thirst unquenched.Incomplete, unfulfilled, my heart seeks the fullness of lifeIn the midst of the wide wide world among countless men.

– Kabir Chowdhury

Sikandar Abu Jafar

My Dream

Earth, O earth,Would you remember meWhen many many years had rolled by?When your dilapidated cottagesWould be freshly thatchedAnd no rains would stream downTheir gaping holes any more,And the inmates of your home would sleep in peaceOn cool mats spread on the dry floor- –Would you, in the quiet hour of such a happy nightRemember me?Would you remember that as I lay in my crumbling roomAnd wasted away in consumptive feverI used to dream all the time of such an hour as this?

– Kabir Chowdhury


Abul Hussain

On the Death of a Poet-Playwright

Suddenly the lights went out on the stage. Row after rowOf men look all around. Strange, the hero himselfIs not on the stage. The play has endedAnd the crowd look about with tearful eyes.It is not yet time to go but still one has to leave.

Whichever way I look, front or behind, this way or that,There is no laughter or song anywhere. The lifeThat once flooded the city and the countrysideWith the torrent of plays is no more.Its current has stopped. And if a thousand barbariansRule today, in the name of real work, swinging their canes,

I shan’t be surprised any more. I knowAt the glances of whose red eyes our time moves.I have seen his body like a charred piece of wood,Burning behind the screen of moth-eaten scriptures,Or, smiling in hypocritical modesty baring all his teeth,Or spluttering big words, clad in hisBrilliant red tunic and savage boots.

What will he do with the handsome hero?The bridegroom in dainty silken attireHas no charm for him,His voice doesn’t sound like honey to his ears.

The easy smooth royal discourseIs but a waste of time in his eyes.The age of poetry, of drama, is at an end.

The warm honeyed glow has gone out.Now the rule of drab colourless days is on.

– Kabir Chowdhury

The Heritage

This heritage of bright blue skies, of lightThe colour of rice sheaves, of rain which flowsLike tears, of moonlight spreading like a sprayOf blood, of pitch black darkness, and the airAs light and soft as cotton wool, and daysAs calm as tranquil streams, and flowers and birdsMany hued, and the waning moon and cloudsWhich tower like endless forests: do we knowIt all enough to love and cherish it?

Shall we not cherish too, this soil, this earth,Source of abundant gifts, where we have walkedIn freedom, whose air, light and water arePart of our being, and whose sodden clayWe savoured in the rainy months? Shall weForget the greenish sparkle of rice shoots,The smell of flowers and golden harvests, andThe carefree laughter or the ringing tonesOf children, wild like running brooks, the smilesOf girls possessed of flame like grace?

Can we

Ever forget the sight of ploughmen onFields, weavers at their looms, blacksmiths at workOn axes, potters labouring at wheels


Or woodmen sawing logs, carpenters withTheir tools or fishermen with nets and seines,And crowds of other craftsmen in workshops,On farms, in factories, who toil and dieUnknown, the sweat of their brows pouring downTheir faces, forming pools where they work? CanWe who have seen this spectacle forget?

– Syed Sajjad Husain

Socrates

Strolling in ancient Athens as I movedAmong those passing cars and shady trees,I thought of you, bald pated Socrates,Your ugly snub nosed looks and sunken eyes,And wondered why those crowds of Attic youth,From far and near, would flock and gather roundYou who had little wealth and less pretenceOf wisdom and no claim to knowledge whichUnlocks love’s secrets. Yes, you only knewHow to pose riddles and seek answers or,Diver like, fish for truths amid the turnsAnd eddies of unceasing talk. SometimesYou launched a soaring kite of teasers whichSet them long puzzling. All the while you keptStrongly insisting that you hardly hadAn inkling of what real truth was. ButYour modest words, flung like a pebble orStone into a dark stagnant pool, have notStopped echoing since down the ages, andYour voice comes ringing still across the years

Reminding us how you elected thenTo turn your back upon the beaten trackAnd tread a lonesome path in disregardOf certain risk.

You chose to prove that deathOutshines life, that indeed at times it canItself be life, endowed with matchless grace.

– Syed Sajjad Husain


Syed Ali Ahsan

My East Bengal

What an amazingly cool river is my East BengalHow quiet and again how gay in sudden overflowing abandonOnce loud and noisy, many a time sleepy and lethargicAt other times a continuous flood of subdued voices.

How often cranes and river snipesA kingfisher or twoSome chattering crowsCluster of Kash thickets singing in the windA river of words rich with wavesA tiny island of earthWith a few trees and some cottagesThatched with sun dried coconut leaves.

You are bottomlessIn the overflowing waters of the monsoonA heaven of generous heartA wide expanse of lifeStretching beyond the horizonA greeting like the boatSwimming onward with the sweeping currentLike the full-throated song of the boatmanSinging with abandonFrom his seat perched way up at the projecting front.

What astonishing wealth of lifeHow many times in how many strange lands have I seenNumberless trees, hills and smokeThe richness of many seas

Dark thick blue, gray like the fog, or black,Seen the sun in the sky of many countriesRight and left, touching the horizonOr glittering on the iceRed, blue, or crystal whiteAnd in the generous width of the woodlands of Western

Bavaria.

The air, light of the sunAnd every moment then had seemedTo envelop me in some soft green languor.But the generous profusion of green ıIn allts wild splendour ıNow suddenly comeback to me new and fresh ıHe my world is much more glamorous ere is a land like a river ıQuiet, overflowi, full of music, ıMyri faced, a line sketch of many colours

ıThis is my EastBengalWhose likeness is a cool quiet river.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Abdul Ghani Hazari

Wives of a Few Bureaucrats

We the wives of a few bureaucratsTurn our face to you.O Lord, save us,Devastated in relaxation are we,Wives of a few bureaucrats.O Lord, husbands areDivers in the bottomless sea of files(They alone know what they gather),We are destitutes through family planningTime rolls by crushing us.

We the wives of a few bureaucratsFrom dawn to duskOn the verge of some noble thoughtAnd the faded pages of fashion journals,Movie advertisements in dailies,And nude pictures of health and beauty,And the sensation of a nearly achieved greatness.

Encroachment of fat in the valley of the waist,The swelling of the belly, the double chinPanicky at breasts’ decline

O Lord, we gasp in the mausoleum of fat,We the wives of a few bureaucrats.

Our store is full of provisions.Surplus pocket money in the folds of our pillow,Helen Curtis in glass drawers,

Annie French Astringent milk.

DeodorantHand LotionRevlonChristian DiorAnd RubensteinObviously middle aged compensationFrom our husbandsFor the shortage of warm love.

Proud of the salute of orderliesOur husbands are always in the officeObstructions to others’ promotionRejection of applicationsAnd a few dignified signaturesEven on getting back home.

Jealous at the friend’s liftProfit and loss of business run under another’s nameAnd telephoneAnd telephoneAnd telephone.

The Revlon on our lipsThe foundation cream on our faceThe careful beauty spot on our foreheadGrow dustyThe evening invitation gets old and stale.

And then O LordThoughts of the second manMake us restless for a momentThe old lover is married


Young adolescents’ auntThe subordinates’ motherGranny in the sister’s homeAnd the evening invitation old and stale.

On the pages of the British magazineMaggie’s amourJaqueline’s hymnFlirtations of Liz TaylorBB’s lustAnd Marylin’s suicideAnd suicideAnd suicideAnd the evening invitation.

And then O LordOur body insipid at nightThe bloodless moon it the windowThe used bodySnoring husbandSleepless nightAnd tranquillizer.

O Lord with no other means leftWe turn our face to youGive us some workıMrror in vanity bagsıFoundation an lipstickıAnd social service.ıSavage c

ticism of KindergartensıOr the front roweat in ladies’ clubs ıOr inaugurtion of the children’s clinicBy virtue of our husbands’ rank.

We the wives of a few bureaucrats

O LordGive us some wo

nything at all ıTat we may throw ourselvesInto its abyss.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Zillur Rahman Siddiqui

The Progeny

Some old men of this, my villageI knew in childhood, they belongedTo the clan of dinosaurs, hugely builtMoving like demons of fairy tales,Breathing hard, and sinking downOn the low verandah of the outer hallOr squatting on the grassy plot in front,Particularly in summer, I remember,After a day’s labour in the fieldsAnd before returning to their crowdedQuarters, westward in the villageThe solemn hall, lofty, overlookingOpen fields, its deep hempen roof,The lawn green grassed, from whereIf you looked, your vision touchedThe distant village nestling closeTo horizon; on summer eves, these menRested their tired limbs on the soothing grass.Their bared skin thick and wrinkledLike buffalo’s, bare, broad feetThat seldom knew the shelter of shoesAnd only rarely on festive days,

On weddings, sabbaths or in prayer groupsThe wooden sandals knew the weightOn their hefty trunks; and later whenIn monsoon the Nabaganga swelled,Signalling the start of busy ferrying

Of people in frail palmyra rafts,These barely kept afloat, underThe weight of just one of these old men.

If nowadays I chance to visitMy native village, I look around,I do not see them, the dinosaur clan,Rather their progeny, poor petty soulsAll cased in little shrivelled bodies,Bent backs, walking fieldwardIn small steps, eating cold riceOf yesternight. And on market daysCrossing the shaky bamboo bridgeIn steps light as a hopping bird’sAnd on Eid and Bakareed days,ıAs huings and embracings start ıThese men, their brittle frames ıKept hidn under gowny shirts, – ıYield fearflly to the friendly hug,These men, the progeny of our elders.


Shamsur Rahman

Freedom, You Are

Freedom, you areRabindranath’s evergreen verses

and timeless lyrics

You are Kazi Nazrul shaking his shaggy mane,a great-souled man in the grip

of creative exaltation

You are the bright-eyed crowdat the Shaheed Minar

on International Mother Language Day

You are the militantflag-waving demonstration

resounding with slogans

Freedom, you arethe peasant’s smile

in a field of lush crops

You are the village girl’scarefree swim across a pond

under the midday sun

Freedom, you arethe sunburnt biceps

of a young worker

You are the freedom fighter’s eyesglinting in the dark

at the desolate frontier

You are the dazzling, sharply worded speechof a bright young student

in the shade of a banyan tree

Freedom, you arethe stormy debates

in tea-stalls and on maidans

You are the drunken lashesof summer thunderstorms

across the horizon

Freedom, you arethe broad chest of the shoreless Meghna

at the monsoon’s height

Freedom, you arethe inviting velvet texture

of father’s prayer mat

Freedom, you arethe undulations on mother’s spotless sari

drying in the courtyard

Freedom, you arethe colour of henna

on my sister’s soft palms

Freedom, you arethe colourful star-bright poster

in my friend’s hand

Freedom, you arethe housewife’s glossy black hair

hanging free

You are the wind’s wild energy,


the little boy’s colourful kurta,sunlight on the little girl’s soft cheek

Freedom, you arethe arbour in the garden, the koel’s song,

glistening leaves on ancient banyan trees,the poetry notebook, to scribble as I please

– Kaiser Haq

Crows

No footprints on the dirt trackNo cow or cowherd in the pasturesThe ragged dykes desolateRoadside trees hushed and allAround in naked sunlightCrows flapping wings, crows, only crows.

– Kaiser Haq

This City

This city holds out a wizened hand to the tourist,wears a patched kurta, limps barefoot,gambles on horses, quaffs palm beer by the pitcher,squats with splayed legs, jokes, picks licefrom its soul, shakes off bed bugs,

This city is a cut purse, scoots at the sightof a policeman, looks about with eyes like the flaming moon

This city raves deliriously, teases with riddles,bursts into lusty song, sheds the sweatof its brow on its feet in tireless factories,

dreams at times of cradles,ogles the pretty girl standing quietly on the verandah.

In scorching April or monsoon drenched JuneThis city puts its mad shoulder to the wheelsOf pushcarts, makes for the brothel at nightfall,Burning with desire to celebrate the flesh,This city is syphilitic, it tosses and turns

between the white walls of a hospital ward,This city is a suppliant at the pir’s doorstep,

wears charms and talismanson its arms, round its neck,

Day and night this city vomits blood,never tires of funeral processions,

This city tears its hair in a frenzy, dashes its headon the walls of dark prison cells,

This city rolls in the dust, knowing hungeras life’s solitary truth,

This city crowds into political rallies,its heart tattooed with postersbecomes an El Greco reaching for lofty azure,

This city daily wrestles with the wolf with many faces.

– Kaiser Haq

So Many Days

One, two, three, the days go by,I am gashed by their cold razor edge.One, two, three, the days go by,Yet there’s no sign of you,You don’t come and stand leaning against the door frameOr brushing back a wanton lock from the forehead


Ask, ‘And how are you? Won’t you everCome again?’ See, loneliness sportively proffers her beakerAnd I drain it to the lees. My warm handsTouch the bed, chair, wall, the saplingIn the courtyard, and everywhere meetThe absence of your dazzling body.

I stand facing the scimitar of despair,Like a youth offering his breast to the oppressor’s bayonet.Without your visits this room is a tombOvergrown with wild grassWhere a desolate wind sings a ceaseless lament;An ancient skeleton shouts bizarre slogans,Busy termites swarm among its ribs.

Whenever you step into this room, the old door frameLaughs merrily, on the instant the window curtainTurns into a nautch girl; I grow happy as a birthday –Flickering candle light and the Moonlight SonataUnobtrusively transform all into a garden.And when you leave, my heart is likeA crematorium on a wintry evening.

– Kaiser Haq

Mask

Shower me with petals,Heap bouquets around me,I won’t complain. Unable to move,I won’t ask you to stopNor, if butterflies or swarms of fliesSettle on my nose, can I brush them away.

Indifferent to scent of jasmine and benjarnin,

To rose water and loud lament,I lie supine with sightless eyesWhile the man who will wash meScratches his ample behind.The youthfulness of the lissome maiden,

her firm breasts untouched by grief,No longer inspires me to chantNonsense rhymes in praise of life.

You can cover me head to foot with flowers,My finger won’t rise in admonishment.I’ll shortly board a truckFor a visit to Banani.*

A light breeze will touch my lifeless bones.

I am the broken nest of a weaver bird,Dreamless and terribly lonely on the long verandah.If you wish to deck me up like a bridegroomGo ahead, I won’t say noDo as you please, only don’tAlter my face too much with collyrium

Or any embalming cosmetic. Just see that I amJust as I am; don’t let another faceEmerge through the lineaments of mine.Look! The old maskUnder whose pressureI passed my whole life,

a wearisome handmaiden of anxiety,Has peeled off at last.For God’s sake don’tFix on me another oppressive mask.

– Kaiser Haq

* An affluent locality of Dhaka.


Alauddin Al Azad

The Monument

Have they destroyed your memorial minaret?Don’t you fear, comrade,We are still here

A family of ten million, alert and wide awake.The base that no emperor

Could ever crushAt whose feet

The diamond crown, the blue proclamation,The naked sabre and the tempestuous cavalry

Have crumbled into dust.

We are that simple hero, that unique crowd,We who work in fields,

Row on rivers,Labour in factories!

Have they destroyed your brick minaret?Well, let them. Don’t you fear, comrade,

We a family of ten millionAre alert and wide awake.

What kind of a death is this?Has anyone seen such a death

Where no one weeps at the headOf the departed?

Where all sorrow and pain from the Himalayas to the seaOnly come together and blossom

Into the colour of a single flag?What kind of a death is this?

Has anyone seen such a deathWhere no one laments aloud

Where only the sitar turns into theGorgeous stream of a mighty waterfall,

Where the season of many wordsLeads the pen on to an era of Poetry?

Have they destroyed your brick minaret?Well, let them. We forty million masons

Have built a minaret with a violin’s tuneAnd the bright colours of our purple heart.

The lives of the martyrs float like islandsIn the dark deep eyes ofRainbows and palash flowers

We have etched for you their namesThrough the ages

In the foamy stones of love.

That is why, comrad

, ıOn the granite peak of ou thousand fistsıShines lik

the sunThe sun of a mighty pledge.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Jahanara Arzoo

Shabmeher,* For You(On the tragic death of Shabmeher, a young girl raped.)

If from this pen of mine, though only for a moment,bullets and grenades instead of ink poured out –then I could wreak vengeance on those beastsin human visage.If instead of ink, my pen blazed with tremendous fire –then I would burn to ash that mountain of sinpiling up for ages.

Shabmeher, do you know how many nights I have not sleptremembering that innocent

forever-sleeping face of yours –as if I saw your blossoming soft face in the facesof daughters and young girls in all our homes

– how unparalleled, how pure –Exactly like reflections of your faceare those faces radiant with celestial beauty,innocent and lovely as green new leaves.

Shabmeher, do you know how the striped saridraped around your blooming young bodywas hanging in wait like a noose –if only all those beasts could be strung up there.But the ink of this powerless pen of mineis capable of nothing, Shabmeher!Shabmeher, the blue pea-blossoms twined lovinglyaround your feet, the juicy kul-fruits

gathered in the folds at your waist,the guava half-eaten by bats

was still clutched in your hand.The two young hands that wanted to labor all day long

to give your sad mother, brothers and sisters some little comfortin return –

And perhaps a few days laterthose same hands would be adorned with henna patterns – you’dweara new red saree, ornaments at ankles and ears,youth’s first monsoon freshet rising in those eyes of yours;holding your husband’s hand and crossing the tiny yardunder the burning lamp of the moon, you too would ascendto the bridal room; with pure offspring as fruit,you too would be in days to come a happy lover, wife and mother.

But what cruel fate’s beastly pawhas snatched you away in a momentfrom your long-desired self, to that morguewhere, swathed in a white shroud,in a moment you’ve vanished from our sight;and spreading your wings in the distance you’ve flown away,a pure white swan.

Shabmeher, how I wish that from these powerless wordsbullets would pour forth instead of ink –if only for a while,yes, if only for a while.

– Carolyne Wright with Farida Sarkar and Ayesha Kabir

* Shabmeher was a Bangladeshi girl, about thirteen or fourteen years old, froma poor village family. She was lured into prostitution when a familyacquaintance promised her mother that he would arrange a good job for thedaughter. The man took Shabmeher to Tanbazar, a town in the Narayanganjdistrict near Dhaka, notorious for its brothels and other criminal activities.When the horrified girl realized what her “job” was to be, she protested andrefused to cooperate. The procurer and his henchmen gang-raped her andbeat her to death. Her story was dramatized in a short film produced byDhaka University in 1989, based on this poem by Jahanara Arzoo.


Kaisul Huq

My Business

To make words meaningful is my business.By adding words to words I build sentences,A strange and mysterious garden of sentences.Sometimes the ordered words of the sentences

turn out to be soldiers,Sometimes they become forlorn wandering lovers.

At other times they grow intoshining faces in a procession;

They sparkle in slogans and posters:it is a wonderful art gallery

Born of the artist’s deepest devotion.

This garden of sentences is all my asset.I lay it out, dress it up,

design and decorate it just as I please.Some pictures are after my heart,

some are not.There lie about many many incomplete ones.

Joy and sadness lie cheek by jowlClose to each other in the depth of sound.

Words inside sentences –Words, words,Till the end only words remain,At the beginning of everything

and at the very end.

The rise and fall of man,

His tumultuous emotions.His firm feelings of solidarity,All man’s thoughts and ideas –-All, allAre built of the strangeBottomless empire of dreamladen words.

This garden of words, and the words within wordsThat are going on working ceaselesslyIn the deep recesses of the human heart;Into that garden of wordsI demand my right of admittance,For to make words meaningful

is my only business.– Kabir Chowdhury

The Wonder Bridge of Words

None of us could tellWhen you and I came up the wonderful bridge of wordsAnd stood close to each other.

In the secret depth of our heartsA light shone – the light of an intimate embrace.Wiping out all the lines that kept us apart.Words brought us together on a smooth level plain.We grew intimate

like the waves on the bosom of a river,like the silvery light on the back of a fish,like the blue deep silence of the sky.

Climbing the wonder bridge of wordswe came thus close to each other.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Hasan Hafizur Rahman

Like a Denuded Barren Field

This world is like a denuded barren fieldin some stormy night

There is not a blade of grassthat I can clutch

And if some strange storm comesand whirls me away

None will be there to know about it.

I long ceaselessly to see my forefathersin my dreams

I want to see what they looked like,What hopes they cherished

in their breastsBefore they disappeared.I long to know all these.I have come floating in the current

of progeny,

Who knows how far this current will run?Ah! if I knew its beginning and its end!I step on the lovely grass,I open my eyes in the midst of greenery.Light and darkness count the petals

of my life.

One day, I know, they will have donetheir counting

And then wiping their handsthey will gather the harvest

in their granary.All this time, won’t

my dream images take shapeeven once?

Shall I inextricably merge with the harvestsof yesteryears?

Like a bubble, noiselessly, leaving no trace?Is this world like a denuded barren field

in some stormy night?– Kabir Chowdhury

Look, in the Desolate Garden

Look, in the desolate garden stretch the dead pale grassAnd dull eyes without lashes. The unceasing breathOf nature blows all around. Cracks gapeIn the bosom of the earth. There is no spring anywhere,No water far or near, the never-ending sourceGushing out from the high hills is empty and lifeless.Shall we not get a grain of happiness in the final hour,Water to quench our thirst in some home, meadow or port,To fill our heart with divine bliss?

In the tattered days of longing, will there be onlyFalling leaves fluttering in dust storms, the marble song of death,Only the stony vigil of frustration? Shall we only seeA rocky wooden face? Would we never knowWhat heavenly taste lay in fruits and grains,Or what celestial breeze moved the painted veil of love?Homeless, ever hoping, wearing youth’s cloakWe only look at life’s senility.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Abu Zafar Obaidullah

Kamol’s Eye

Know Kamol?Sturdy handsome physique, shining eyesSharp, radiant like the mid day sun.

A bulletTore awayKamol’s right eye.Or my friendWho had a learned conscientious heartThat has been devoured by dogs, jackals, now fugitives

And many more friends of yours and mine,Whose veins were like KrishnachuraAre silent nowIn the fresh thunder of sonorous blood.

Why did they takeKamol’s eye, blood, heart,I haven’t asked thatRecently a mother has sold her babyBecause she needs rice.

In Tulshi’s ghat, a mere dot of a village,The son in low has come for a visit,

So the mother in law has killed herself.Is it because the Subarna gram has disappeared?

Then go round on a tripSee, on the verandah or the courtyardOr at the tank ghat

The naked female body is bathed in moonlight,Darkness is her shelter,Or a noose around her neck.Why did they take Kamol’s eye, blood, heart?That’s a question I put to you all.

– Quazi Mostain Billah

Epilogue

Vainly have I roamed all these yearsby the seashore and the fountain.

Vainly have I looked for a placewhere I could find a little solacefor my lacerated soul.

At last when I begged of the dark nightthe boon of sleep,Icy death sidled up to meand with his cruel smile said,I have come, my beloved!

– Kabir Chowdhury


Al Mahmud

Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachtani

I went out to go somewhere,My clothes washed clean,At least clean enough for a visitTo a friendly rendezvous;The punjabi still smacked of the warm sun.I had some small coins in my pocket,A new poem written that morningAnd a few cheap cigarettes.

‘Where could I go now?’I wondered.‘Shaheed is at the Television,Shamsur Rahman has turned journalist,Elderly Jafar happily bets on sleek horses,And I am not good either at Hasan’s art,Drawing floral designs over the blue textureOf Mother Bengal.Arati has slunk away and has found herMission in teaching the Bible at a faraway convent,Shebu, too, is in India.O God, God, this then is what remains of myFraternal bonds.

I am looking for a friend now,Looking for a friend all over the city,I need a friend now. In my consciousness there’s this hauntingrelentlessDesire ıTo knock at a familiar door, o meet a friendly face, ıAnd the keen, almost

ameless desireTo read out one of my poems flowed in my veinsLike the quick, restless beat of blood.

A Hebrew cry spouted through myCrucified heart like a fierce jet of blood,Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachtani.

There is a lock everywhereOn all my destinations.

– M. Harunur Rashid

The Pitcher of Time

How long shall I reluctantly keep open my scene drinkingthirsty eyes ?

Everything grows weary, even nature descendsin the faraway fathomless darkness.

What is then left, Oh sky, Oh veil?How long shall I flutter wearing my shroud

like a shawl?

How long, for how many agesShall I watch the night sky bending low

with the weight of my sight like theshoulder of an ox?

Who makes multitudinous woundsin the black body of that ox

with his sharp spearAnd what drops from those wounds

I do not understand yet.Is that blood, fat, fire or white light

that drops


Day and night endlessly on the strange worldand on life

drops drops drops

And then when that too is over that savage oxseems to melt into nature’s beauty.

Oh sky, Oh veil, do you then push asidethe golden pitcher

And hide beyond my sight?

An overturned pitcher of light floats along the skyBut none sees it, none realises that the goldenPitcher drinks up time’s stomach;None pays any attention to it, for every morningThey see another container gurgling

And floating endlessly by

How devotedly they concentrate on

rth, children, ıand grains.ıMillion of frightened young women ıhold on to the waist

of their men.ıIn ther big bellies they only pine for the hurt ıof

aseless births.ıFro the fleshy nests come out one by one only ıt

soul’s sparrowsıAd see how all the world gets filled up with ıedangered sounds.ıIn this melancho

y narrative, Oh sky, Oh veil,ıShall Iot become a stanza even?ıAway

from human habitation, away fro

smoke, fire, smell of spices,

How long shall I lie on my sidein this bush wearing my shroud

And watch the golden pitcher and the bickeringsof the oxen.

– Kabir Chowdhury

Fingers of Truth

Nowadays music does not delight me any more,So sometimes when on cheerless nights

the days of my adolescence come to my mindI remember the face of the old man in Brahmanbaria,I see his angel faceAnd his vibrant fingers on the enamoured sarod

moving incessantlyLike some sorrow melting faster than tears

in the depth of the unopened eyes.

Once sitting at the feet of some angelI heard man’s unique music,I heard the sound softer than sorrow, anguish,

love, sin, prayers,I saw how easily it rendered insignificant

all prayers in human language.Some hid his face . . . someone wanted to take off

her veil and see more easily God’s throne. . . The entranced priest burnt his finger

with his own cigarette . . .

Some child entreated, mother dear, give me the toy over therefrom which the sound of music is coming . . .

Someone with an invisible stroke on the tabla said,


Not so fast, maestro, I can’t keep pace . . .That charm does not seem to emanate from music

anymore.

I have only looked for some fine fingersin man’s hands

I have only looked for some warm sympathy in man’s voiceBut all the hands I touch,

all the fingers of truth I grasp,Seem so cold. Lifeless, frozen, a few leaden spokes,They keep subdued the contentment of all wires,

the electricity of all sounds.

Whenever I go to the stream, the sea birds,mountains and nature

I see someone raising his weightless handfrom a sweet sound of meaninglessness.

Whose lit up fingers suddenly vanish leaving no trace?Pursuing the resonance of the receding sound,Lonely, I continue to look for his arms,

his fingers.

– Kabir Chowdhury

From The Golden Contract

1

I have no coins of gold; do not ask for a dower gazelle.If you accept, I offer this bare hand,Having never put a price on my soul and raked in the gold andthe gains,Courting deceit and betrayal.If you offer love, I can respond with a kiss to seal this bond.

Born without wiles, I learnt no other trade.Your body for mine, other than this corporeal gift I have nothing; nothing with whichTo buy ornaments or gems.Disrobe, maiden, and you too shall gaze upon my manhood -Unadorned even by a leaf from the olive tree.When you eat of that forbidden fruitGive me a portion too.In knowledge and oblivion we shall find the other’s measure. The truth is, maiden, I am not vanquished, for poets never areThough pain sears through their nerves and veins.

……….

10

Our ancient tribe raises its hand in salutation to the creed ofbrotherhood.See, beloved, peace descends over the land of Hiuen Tsang.Let us stick badges of honourOn the coats of those who proclaim a new dawn over AsiaOur creed shall be the just distribution of grain.Sing the song of equalityAnd such chants of love, courageous one,That they destroy the seeds of difference among men.

And then... should you wish to turn to the matter of desireShed your garment and step into the shade of this paddy fieldI shall wring the juice of love from these golden grainsAnd blend it into the fragrance of my tender caress.

See this silken saree in my trembling hands -It is my nuptial offering maiden, richer by farThan what the king’s weaver wove.


Melodious maid proclaim this worthless one your chosen one.

11

Since childhood we have heard, girl, that BengalIs the sanctuary of sages.

Is it not arduous to keep faith in the past, gracious one?They sprout and thrive in its abundant rain.But look – glum-faced bats now hang from the chambers ofknowledge believe that Dipankar once roamed this landAnd Sheelabhadra breathed his first breath here?Leave out the past – and we are left with a pitiable voidWhere a herd of cinanthropus cough down the dim corridors of

academia.Where will you flee, frightened maid, in this drunken Paleolithic

twilight.Once a free gazelle,You cringe now under a shower of flints, bruised and grazed.

And elsewhere, alas, a herd of giraffes nodding in existentialistecstasy

Poke elongated necks into every nook of our heritage and art,Our incomparable dreams, palaces, and all our delicate handiwork.

12

Wakened in the dead hour of night by the lament of the riverThat winds through the sleeping village –Some one rushes out –Seeking wildly in the waters of the tideHis companion–if she be found.The woman who once waited up and openedThe door of her fruits and grains.

Tonight blind terror reigns. Hold my hand brave companion.Does your body exude the magical fragrance of grains?Then we shall retard the devouring throngAnd the blows of its violent lust.I hold this banner of justice over you, regal one–A resplendent flag bearing the colours of my compassion and

need.See the eastern sky trembles as lightning strikesSwear by that fire woman, that it is to me you belong.

13

Open those incense reddened eyes, beautiful maid.The patterned border of your saree trembles under my breath.Whenever did the love bird blush in the woods–That you tremble so like a storm-tossed reed?Your hair falls untied; raise your face heart’s-gladness.That glittering jewel on your temple is my wildly beating heart.The villagers carry auspicious rice on their winnowing trays.Grains lie scattered in the yard–Attar and incense perfume the nuptial bed.Draw your veil and fasten your hair in tiers once more.My sisters kneel on the threshold in ritual stance.Bow and receive the first injunction of conjugal life.Noble matriarchs are gathered to pronounce the first benedictionLike the river’s tide chant, chant the golden words: ‘kobul, kobul’–‘I am willing, I accept, I agree’!

14

By the rain I swear, and the dark hued grain,By fish and fowl and all fertile, halal beasts,By the plough, harness and scythe, by the wind-bloated sail.No poet plays havoc with the heart’s deep creed.


No poet betrays the words he weaves.If I break my pledge and sully this tongue –Like a blade of lightning, woman, sunder me in two;Pronounce divorce, refuse to light my stove.Hear my pledge: On your lovely body my kisses will fall foreverin ripplesAs the fragile waves caress the Paniuri afloat on a nocturnalstream.If I break this vowMay a deadly curse strike me down.I swear by that which all poets hold most dearBy language and by the magic of the poetry of love, I swear.

– Sonia Amin

Mohammad Moniruzzaman

The Annihilation(History of the Third World War)

Introduction :

Out of nowhere they cameand planted themselves firmlyon some other land.

And the economy, caught in the frenzyof some outlandish dance,

Began to move like a voluptuous whore,greedy and yet arrogant.

Mauled, wounded, grimy all over,The plague of war proudly fetched

all kinds of merchandise,And the corrupt and the sinful

scintillated in a savage joy.

One’s own homea tiny slice of paradise,a little island of dream,

And the rest a veritable HellThe crooked lords knew their business well.Indifferently they stacked the countless dead

and then went out jauntilyfor a stroll.

In the desolate landonly a fire burnt in the eyes of men,

And the eyes of mothersSparkled with tears of blood.


Conclusion:

No drums were beaten by anyone.No victorious bugle was

own. ıThere was no fuss, no fanfae. ıA silent whiff of

eath ıput out for d the beloved

. ıIn the liquid da

ness ıthrobbed only pain ı¸and sufferg ı¸¸and lonely groan

ı ı Leaving all the quarls and longings ıand h

artaches behind ı

he world of Ban Adam ı lay in total oblivionı– Kabir ChowdhuryıThe Love LetterıToday you and Iare immortalıfor we have laid our eyes on the hart of the sun.ıAfter a million ligh years, the world of powerıwhich

reigned supreme in his decadeıwill lose its sun and merge ithıthe encrusted sand.ıTramplin the skin of this civilizationıwe shall enter th

being of loveıbahing our bodies in the cool fire of the moon.

– Kabir Chowdhury

Omar Ali

Hasina

Hasina, your face soft with the glow of kantali champaIs beautiful. You are East Bengal’s pretty girlYour footprints on the quiet dusty courtyardAre gold. At your touch everything comes alive.

Hasina, your voice is a flute playing in the distant meadow.Its music enchants the affectionate shade of the hijal tree,The noonday mango and neem groves, river bank,Paddy fields and sandy plains. You are beautiful,You raise a thrill in the wind.

This land is yours, this land is mine, itIs everybody’s, Hasina. The blue bird thatCalls from the shimul branch is our bird.The river that flows smoothly over thereIs our river. Ours the sunshine and the darkness.

Hasina, you and I shall live in this worldFor some days. In bright spring and pale winter.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Syed Shamsul Huq

I Shall Have to Go Out

Shall I do nothing?Shall I go nowhere?Shall I only sit like this

before an empty cupwith the kettle held at anangle over it?

Shall I just stand like thisbetween emptiness and fulfilment

And watch the restless birdsscrawl letters of goldin a blue mosquein some dream city?

And only adorn myself?Choose fine shoes?Matching coloured socks, a white shirt?And write poor short stories,

too ephemeral?

Are all these only a preludeto the last phase of a song?

Or, am I a very sick man,waiting with an arrogant hopefor the wild wild stormthat will some day snatch awaythe restless ribbons from the

city heights?

Or, do I only await the approaching

deaths to shine with a fiery lightin my two eyes?

Who cried in the streets?Who collects dear ones in the colony?Who is the muezzin

trying to give the call of azan todayamidst all this desolateanarchy of hope?

It was long long agoThat the mouth of a brown bag

had snapped open andcountless silver coins hadfallen tumbling on the rocky

courtyard.

Where have the horses from the stable goneRaising a storm of soundWith their fiercely stamping feet?Whose impetuous voice upset them so?

I shall have to go out.Ages seem to have gone by since.I shall have to untie

the coloured handkerchief, hair,Bring back the truant horsesWhose manes are full of a sweet

fragrance,Riding on whose back

I had once sojourned far.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Three Sonnets from Deep Within the Heart

Sonnet 1

A bird springs from the shirt at the magician’s touchFrom the hair gold coins minted in Akbar’s reignThe crowd watches hushed; the marketgoers throngAs the magician extracts coin after coin.You have released the bird of passion from those eyesThe full moon of love from that heart.But, you are spellbound yourself, are you not?You want to leave – something holds you back.She who does not care a fig for your feePlays her own tricks for the pleasure of the gameConjures a bird, sets it free, and does not call it back againCoins of gold roll in the dust at her feet.This is indeed some magic, for the greatest master of the artIs one who unfurls coloured kerchiefs deep within the heart.

Sonnet 12

The elongated corpse of darkness sprawls on the yardFrom behind the beanstalks, the moon, snake-like, sheds its skinWitches hunt flowers fallen from maidens’ hair.Inside the stars, a cotton thresher the fine fluff of cotton spinsThe silver plate men call the moon – sways on this nuptial night.The wild haired ebony tree dons the minstrel’s robes.Milk trickles down from the fertile cowLaughter and tears, the two dimensions meet.Preparations for the feast are onThey send for you.You who chose to walk alone in the path of sorrow for many

miles.

Isn’t the Universe throbbing now in your wounded heart?They send for you once more.On this silver, moon-washed night, have you bolted your door?

Sonnet 25

Time, thieving herdsman, has consumed so much of the creamof our lives

So often the wails rose from the barren fieldsSo many golden boats have drowned in the river of timeAnd the shepherd who lost my herd never returned.So many ponds could not quench one high summer thirstSo many herbs could not cure us of our delirium.The leech has sucked away so much of our bloodAnd many flowers have disappeared from the shimul bough.But, should I for that stop milking my white cow each morningOr pawn to the blacksmith my priceless, silver plough?Should I ask my tree to bear poisoned fruit?Or stop the song deep within the heart?I have seen the Teesta in the leanest monthDance wildly on the peasant’s level yard.

– Sonia Amin


Fazal Shahabuddin

A Familiar Alley

Pull up hereI’ll get off at this lonely alley.

The cobbled road drowsing in theSoft afternoon sun,The rubbish dump at the turn,Where flies buzz over garbageThroughout the year,And the house,The familiar rendezvousI remember allAll the gossip through the evenings,The game of cardsAnd the familiar saree.

I’ll get off here.For once I wanted to get lost,In this tiny little world;The rubbish dump,The endless swoop of fliesOn a decomposed rat,The lamp post andThe hydrant in the warm sun.

This is my familiar alley,Pull up here,There is aroma of the pastIn this desolate house.


In the Blinding Light of This Century

O my self,Cover us in darkness today,Throw us into the depth of an abyss, ıA void darkand endless, ıWe wouldike to sink in an eternity odarkness.ıGive us some darknes

ıFor we’re overwhelmed in the ıBlinding raysf this century, ıWe have been stripped naked ba cruel light, ıAnd there’she ghoulish cry of this nakedness ıIn evy atom of our blood, ıA bright, mechanical,frenzied nakedness as gripped and torn and lashed us asunder. ıW

are apprehensive ıOf our cruel banuptcy: There’s in our soul ıHred blazing like a naked sword, ıGreed lking up our desires, ıAn orgy of perverted sex inur feeling, ıA wild fenzied dance of deah in our aspirations ıAnd lust in ou lov. ıWe a

e appr

hensiveıOfthe ugly, brazen nakednes of ourıLoveıDesireıThirstıKnowldge.ıRavag


we lie, ravishedBy a vulgar, gilded civilization.

O my self,Give us some darkness therefore,Some more darkness,Throw us into the primordial nudity of darkness.


Zia Hyder

Desires within a Casket

I am your father,You owe your birth to me.If there is anything to be proud ofIt lies only in this.Someday when you reminisceYou may take pride in it but I,Your old father, know thatI have never really given you anything

which could make life meaningful to youin the least little way.

Happiness through wealth! Fame through wisdom!Peace through love!

I could never discoverThe value of life in any of these.Rather you might say thatOne could find out the price of life

from certain things.

But, listen, my son,Life is not like a straight line,Nor is it like a curve.No rule of Mathematics can define it properly.It is not a game either, for,However obscure, that has a meaning yet.

Now, I shall soon grow delirious,And, if you like, you can mark annoyance,A close kin of mine,But still, let me make this request to you

as your father,


Please don’t put up a wall around my grave,And place no marble slab there.What is the good of proclaiming the

name and address of oneWho could never discover any meaning

in life?

And, if you, my son,Can discover someday what I looked forThen place a marble slab and write it

over thereAnd say in my epitaph- –

My father,All his life, had sought to discover

this meaning of lifeAnd had failed- –

Come, now you tell mesomething.

Father mine,The years have given me no experience.I am your ineffectual son,A blind serpent with a tattered past

and uncertain future;Perhaps, at long last,I shall discover that life is lik God, ıwithout shape or form.ıBut

in what language and dialogueıC I tell you this, Father mine,ıUnle

s some infinitesimal crack ıin yor ancient preju

ice and faithGives you an insight of your own?

Kabir Chowdhury

Belal Chowdhury

Native Land

I am spread out in your shade and sunshineIn this grass and fragranceBy your side, like your shadowAll along your body.

In the gentle murmur of your rivers,I am there, as you wish me to be –-In the rustling of leaves, in theWhining of winds,Day and Night in your paddy fields

An indifferent BaulA Bhatiali strain floats away into the distanceI am there like the rays of the setting sun,Rolling at your feetI am there in the ears of young paddy,You girl in blue, I am thereOn you like the diamond of your NakchabiSparkling, always sparkling.


On Ekushey Book Fair

We met late in the day at the book fairThe book looks great; my, how nice,What a fantastic cover – who drew it,Qayyum Chowdhury, or somebody else?And even though the title sounds offbeat,


It still looks to be a superhit.Has this writer brought out a book before?Don’t remember seeing one;Though it’s possible I am the only one in the darkAbout what other literature buffs already know.I say, where have you been all this time?Like the tia bird flushed out of a forestYour book too at last has seen the light of the day –Look how long it has been since we last metAnd now today on this field at the book fair.Held it in his hands and turned it over and overLicked a forefingerLeafed through the pages, caressing it with glances . . .Quite bold; courageous, I have to admit;Clasped it close to his breast in a tender embraceAs if to breathe in its fragranceAnd drew in a lungful of crisp, fresh air.Then, suddenly, with an abstract, remote airSlammed the book down, and without a wordStrode off God knows wherePerplexing me that day, today, and ever. . . .

– Farhad Ahmed

Hayat Mamud

Portrait of My Native Land

As I turn the bendI find that the familiar houses and the fieldhave turned into a strange foreign land.The summer breeze raised a cloud of duston the road,perhaps the ancient banyan treeroared fiercely in the summer thunderstorm.

The boys still enjoyedtheir festive picnic

on the old meadow,or perhaps water plants flourished

in the marshy plains.

The air was redolentwith sweet smelling flowers.

That was the land of my parents,of my grand and great-grandparents too . . .Youth throbbing with joy, deathin the smell of the earth,in loving goodwill.

II

Here no banyan tree offered any shade,no wild thorns ever stung the feet either.The dear girls, friends of one’s youth, were all gone

On the bank of the Rayel . . .in the shallow water trembled the picture


of a balustrade,

The strains of a flute, a song . . .Under the ood of the bullock-cartquiered the wealth of dusk.ıHere . . here there was nothing.ıIIIıNo wil

thorns pricked one’s feet, ıthe dear gls were all gone

. . ıSitting inthis strange alien coun

ry, ıin my heart I saw ımy native land,ıThe

and of my parents

of my grand and great-grandparents too . . .

– Kabir Chowdhury

Khaleda Edib Chowdhury

The Vase Is Empty Now

The vase is empty now, the flowers are sadly falling,see how they weep streams of water.

Love, the human race,the dance of the fish’s brilliant fins are all sinking –that yearning of the earth is the constant

companion of all time.Where have the dancing and fluttering of birds’ wings gone?Where has the trembling of sun

among the mustard flowers gone?All seems like helpless moonlight, filled with sadness.

The vase is empty now, the flowers have all fallen.

Tell me where will I find a place set in an empty room,earthen vessels, pots and pans, affection, gentle love;who with overflowing hands will offer

the child’s first rice?Those days are empty now, the young sonhas gone away, leaving his mother’s heart bereft;a thousand years of weeping fall.When the war was over, he never returned

yet he won this flag;but where is freedom’s gentle touch,the ribcage is riddled with bullets!We never attained the flower buds,

the roses are simply full of thorns. . . .The vase is overflowing now with blood.



Rice Sheaves This Alluvial Night

With what cruel desire the dispassionate night stays wide awake– words of lamentation covering their faces with the pure white sarves of mist and moving on – receiving intermittent flahes at the touch of hydro-electric power. I don’t know whether stisfaction comes or not, nor can I tell if its long sigh on the wnd can be heard; even still it seems to come, gliding along the earth In the water’s depths I see the blue of the sky. Standing i the deep night’s channel, I think – “Oh nigt, you’ve come, it seems, from some unknown land of moonligh.”ıLike the sound of rain, moonlight drips down. In the mist, a leepy feeling descends upon the eyelids. But sleep doesn’t coe – the blood runs wild with untamed desire, yet how cruel this onging is! What a furious burning in my body! Ah love, youtell me, is this God’s great universe? A night of gilded dreams bwildered by the scent of flowers? What restlessness is this! In te blood’s channel the dazzling summons of an irresistible will,it se

s love’s gold chariot is moving at the speed of a ruined win.ııI know, night comes like this, like this the hard-won momen comes. I pronounce my life’s longings with a touch of wondrous affetion. In midnight’s musical soiree, tender yet peculiar glanes are exchanged.

e celestial nymph descends with the night’s light in her han.ııThis is how the night of enchantment stays awake – yet sill dispassionate – as if the murmuring flowers of love bloomedhelplessly. The body’s desires grow like plants. Such a night –ah, that is a wealth of longing. A night without mourning or

prayers, murmuring in consciousness acceptable to the sight, turnsa woman into a surging river – her lover composes in her body a strwheel of dreams. The unparalleled desires of the man thirsting totravel go on throbbing in tones of the sacred river’s song. Ah! hat a conspiracy of treasure in the blood! In the endless deepdarkness – in the stream of naked pleasure, the sporting ground moved by a melancholy mystery. Is this the promise of life? ı Immersed for thousands of years in the depths of creation, ma inwardly nourishes his wisdom and consciousness in the tree of natue and desire. In the middle of the silent yet ever-lengthening nght, a gloomy sense of sorrow gnaws away at this starving soul. Wat a heartless, bitter form of life!

n the darkness of such a night, what impenetrable unhappinessı ıBut still this night must be understood once more. A man must kow the object of his longing. Just as unending time goes on allover the world, so the lover in that stream of time cuts love’s teasure-laden body into pieces with the dagger of his will – ll night, thousands of torches will go on burning, red and blue lams, thirsty lips will be crushed by blossoming kisses. The seed of

ove will be sown throughout the land, like the blessing of od.

– Carolyne Wright with Ayesha Kabir and A. U. M. Fakhruddin


Shaheed Quaderi

Rain, Rain

Sudden panic sends colourful homebound crowds –Even the drowsy ones among them –Scuttling like scared red roaches every which wayAs if someone with a cold forbidding voice,Tolling familiar bells,Had come to warn of imminent plague,Emptying all homes and city squares.

And thenA flying lance of lightning rips throughThe rotund whale’s belly of the sky.Thunder and hail and rain:Deafening the earAs if circular saws had roared into ceaseless motionWhile a million lathes set off a tormented whine.

Dusk brings on an electric storm –Nervy and peevish – and moreClouds and water and wind –– Wind with a peacock’s rainbow scream –How imperilled our dwellings –Doors and windows desperate to spread wings –This old house heaves Eke a tyrannosaur –Flash floods sweep through crowded neighbourhoodsAnd gleaming but abandoned avenuesAnd swirl around the city’s knees.

Through the dusk – rent by apocalyptic winds –As if the wind were Israfel’s OM! –

Rain falls aslant on parked cars –The passengers sit quietly, heads bowed

In anxiety and apprehension, and suddenly startled,Look up and seeOnly water,Swift and fierce,Flowing ceaselesslyAnd willy nilly hearThe sound of lamentationIn their own heartsAnd in this weird and vagrant monsoon’s sterile dithyramb.

Tonight in this rain, on city thoroughfares,Tramp and drifter, homeless youth and lifelong beggar,Spiv, thief and the half crazedCome into their own,Theirs is the kingdomIn the rain tonight.The revenue collectorsAlways to be seen carefully countingThe money they pocket every day,Have fled in terror.

They burst into lusty song – darkFestive auditorium and drunken placard swinging from the wall,Twisted telephone pole at whose tip swingsAn old, dented, signboard blown thither by the windWhile the city’s countless shutters keep timeWith a relentless clatter,For the constable on the beat,The sentry and the taxmanHave all fled in terror.


And these too – the wise and the wealthyAnd all their sidekicks and sycophants –They too have slipped away unnoticed –The torrent has washed away all footprintsAnd will only carry a few miserable mementosAs it rushes, merry as a civic procession,Towards the cascading town drains:

A cigarette tin floats by with a sound like tambourines,And broken glass, torn wire, envelopes,Blue letters, yellow laundry slips,Doctor’s prescriptions, white medicine box,A broken button from a favourite shirtAnd miscellaneous keepsakesFrom the varicoloured days of civilized existence.

O Lord, amidst the lightning lit delugeIn this dark city, barefoot and aloneIn tattered pantaloons, insideA shirt billowing like a sail,I am like a shiny little ark –In the lonely turmoil of my flesh and blood existenceSmolders Noah’s restless red hot wrathful soulBut not a single creature – man or beast –-Stirs in response, though the scudding watersCarry the sound of breathing,The wind wafts anguished cries –Exalted by what ardour, towardsWhich city shall I drift,Lured by these seductive waters?

– Kaiser Haq

At Each Other

We stare at each otherin this dark.

The owl’s piercing screechmarks an endless scratchon the body of night.

Torn fragmentary images emergefrom some dark secret source;a drunken stallion rearsup through air into the void;red as a chinarose the moon hangs in the garden.

Your day abruptly becomes a rainbowand I like a crabin sterile revelry can only makeone wound after another.

Suddenly these woundsraise their eager absorbed faces at melike a drunkard’s flaming eyes.

Our entwined limbs draw us closer.Yet, drowning the weird, absurd feelingsthese scenes evoke,your tears can’t touch me.

– Kaiser Haq

The Eyes of Friends

Under the eagle eyed gaze of friendsI bumble through the hot bazaar,


My bright black eyes suspended in theirsLike stale beef in a sunlit stall:Like a slab of stale meat I lieInside the eyes behind the eagle eyed gaze of friends,Eye to eye I am a glistening chunk of meat in sunlightAmidst the drone of filthy flies, the buzz of friends’ eyes;Hanging in the eyes of friends, hanging from their beaks,Swinging in the breeze, a hunk of discoloured meatGaily dangling in the fetid breath of friends, O lookAt my blue veins and arteries –

waving streamersMy best friend’s eyesMounted on a table on a pair of strong legs,Unblinking,Ticking away with my heartbeats,Pounding in my brain, in the pulse on my wrist,My best friend’s eyesRingDing dong all around meAnd follow me restlesslyAs I sit down, stand up, walk, turn about,Or simply stand

aloneon the dark verandah

My best friend’s eyesRingFrom the clock towerWith a loud ding dongTelling everyoneI am finished.

– Kaiser Haq

One Splendid Night

Moyeen, if on a splendid summer nightlit up by firefliesall the brilliant stalwartsof this civilization were to dieit wouldn’t be a great loss to anyone –I know it well, and so do you!Or if I were to slip off this terrace right now,toppling over this handsome bannister,on this topsy turvy windblown evening,on to the dusty footworn pavement,would it be a great loss to anyone?Or let’s say it’s you in my placetaking a dive to the pavement;people will say the same – and they won’t be far wrong.No better time than now, Moyeen! Now!This topsy turvy windblown evening.The two of us have stood hereon this balconyon countless nightsin dew wet hairin the depth of winter,on countless nights leant our faces into the windand the wind that – perhaps – had blown over many rose gardensand brimming lakes and wished to sail over the planetlike a benedictionstruck our faces, pulled up short, hurtand turned topsy turvy with the smell of alien flesh

Remember the rose you picked upat a wedding fete,


that in an hour or so within your grasp,yes, in your handthe poor roseshrivelled like a dead bird into nothing.That exquisite blossom couldn’t bearthe heat of your skin,do you understand, Moyeen, can you?If it were someone else in your placeit wouldn’t have been any different, not at all . . ..

Once I’d bought a green parrotcomplete with cage.It used to hang on the balcony –this very one –and swing in the breeze.It was turning into a pet, even trilleda few tunes, ate out of my hand,drank pots of water.I even taught itcountless phrases. And thenone blustery ght I didn’t bring it in, ıit slipped my mind – ıa sml error ıbut too much for th lovely winged cature to bear. ıDo you see, Moyeen? an you? ıIt’d be the same ıwith someone else in mplace . . ..ıNow, on this bright windblown topsy

urvy evening ıyou sudden wonder aloud, on this co balcony: ı‘After man noble death ıhis nobleweapons remain ıin the e

th’s depths ıbetween layers of rock, eneath piles of rubble; ıcountss rose bouquets are roasted –there’s no fragrance anywhere;getting wind of our absentmindednessat least one parrot has toppled overon to the hard balcony floor –its green hue no longer visibleon this earth,although Machiavellian ideas on statecraftare nearly imperishable,like ancient banyan trees.’

Such thoughts have occurred to metoo, Moyeen! Come, let us twotake the leap on this splendidbreezy firefly lit summer nightbut before thatif all the brilliant stalwarts of this civilizationwere to vanish suddenly, like vapourthen the rose, the parrotand their kinsfolk would benefit a lot more.

– Kaiser Haq


Abdul Mannan Syed

Moonlight Like a Ghost Stands at the Door

Moonlight like a ghost stands at the door, at all the doors,Doors that stand around me, of time, of sky or hell;Burn all the trees, green torch; the busIs a star, the policeman is a star, the shopIs a star: and over everything falls the snow.Hurt by such a sight I lie on the road,And my two sinful eyes are blinded likeThe moon and the sun, and the IThat is born on your palm is a creationOf the mind; he is sorrowless; to himMoonlight is a ghost but on top of a song,The door is a policeman but on top of a birth,Death is a bell but on top of a flower.

– Kabir Chowdhury

Each Other

A short winter day: wrapped in fog, the whole daypermeated with a fiery grace, like our life,so foggy – lights everywhere glittering like stones;switching on their lights the carriages slowly movedalong the winding streets continuously neighing,their diamond eyes dripped like the fog’s signals –-as if, one by one. double decker ships loadedwith love, light, and the blue sky started on theirvoyage this Sunday.

Below the shouts lay our white city revealingits back, shoulders, chin, thigh and hip:a tiny transparent dazed blue dew dropon the green leaf of time. Blessings like water,over our head in eager expectation. A shortday: there was no sound in the neighbouringwoods, no breeze in the city, the city wasin a swoon. The fog had bound men’s eyesas if with a thick burlap.

We two have walked thus far in life,coming out of a huge tilted glass tumbler,leaving behind doves and grapefruit;we are leaping from one rocky footpathinto another silent one like delighted hares.We can’t see each other and so from time to timewe stretch our hands and go on discoveringthe source of our pain, as if we were twopioneering explorers harassed by the attacksof some red and green parrot.

I whispered into the ears of your heart,“This one, single day is like a thousand yearsto me” and you laughed gaily, and athousand pigeons flew away, scatteredall over the sky, perched on the King’s palace,balustrade, main gate, the top of the ancientfountain, minaret, and courtyard.

II

Now you could see the dull sun looking like anetherised grapefruit. The fog, like an Ethiopian,


drew around him his loose robe and slunk offinto January. We could now read each other.Look, there on that street pins still felllike a premature dusk. Suddenly the sun rang outin the East and in the West: and the mosquein our front shone like the waters of themost placid lake.

January’s cold diamonds shone all aroundlike a row of shops in the evening.In your eyes and on your face descended paradiseas an unmistakable fact. And a ray from the sunstruck our neat and well rounded talelike the sharp edge of a knife.

I said to you, “This day went away like asingle moment.” You bent your head andcovered the lotus with the petals of yourtwo hands and wept. Your tears went onglittering like dew drops in the sharpundulating sunlight.

– Kabir Chowdhury

Strange Serenade

The night breeze relieves the fire of the chrysanthemums,riding on the waves of meditation comehuge ship-like swans, that is what is calledmatter’s annihilating attack,

Saying this the steadfast candles of Shab-i-Baratcovered a million years’ distance and set afirerow after row in internal haemorrhage an

insatiable sapphire question: ‘Shall I getyou ever? Shall I not get you ever?’

If I could become a line on your palm, that moleon your back, the curve at your throat,could you then escape me, Shampa?

Stealthily in the lake of your eyes I shallglide by, a swan, shall quietly fallon the pavement before your house a moment,gaze at your breast’s moons and thenmake off through the clouds, a thunder –Oh make me blind like Milton, likeBeethoven deaf.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Hayat Saif

Make Me Cry

And god shall wipe away alltears from their eyes; and thereshall be no more death, neithersorrow, nor crying; neither shallthere be anymore pain; for theformer things are passed away.THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE

If you can, ventriloquist,make this blabbing city

cry.Mingle

your tearsin the silence

of the terrible.Burn this wilderness

of bricks and stonewith the fire

of unknownbones.

Let the heart-rendingcry

of truth and beautyring aloud

Make thissham city

tremblecry.


Asad Choudhury

I Was Enjoying Dreaming

I was enjoying dreamingWhy did you wake me up?What gave you the feelingMy dreams were sad and sorry stuff?

Why drag in such thingsAs my poverty and manners?I was enjoying my dreamsWhy did you wake me up?

– Fakrul Alam

A Question

That the young man’s chestStored strong emotions I knewBut does he harbour them now?That a decrepit withered manSits in the young man’s chest,I know, but is he sitting there still?

– Fakrul Alam

Guessing by What I Glimpsed . . .

I still haven’t been able to figure outWhich is more potent:The river or its current?It could be the river


For its bank containsFish and the ebb and flow of tidesAnd displays both restlessness and placidity.It could be the river,To which our green rice fieldsRemain indebted.But the current?No, I’ll never know what it is capable of,Guessing by what I glimpsed of itIn 1971!

– Fakrul Alam

Mohammad Rafiq

Ekushey*

Great and noble Twenty First, the blood dimmedTwenty First February.

Barefoot processions and streams of peopleOn Dhaka streets

As if a flash flood has swept all these youths hereGirls with flowing hair and white sarees –

the young men

In their fine shirts, sleeves rolled up.A black badge pinned to the left shoulder,

faces sweatingFrom a ritual fire.

From a flower bedecked dais the poet shoutshis fiery words

The revolutionary rhythm of words, phrasesand songs

Which, like unreined horses of the sun, tearthrough the air

Filling the sky with echoes of drumming hooves

A thousand hands raised in hope to make theimpossible possible.

The sun’s galleon drops its oars in the eastern sky.

Barely two miles from Dhaka to the south liesBailapur;

And Jamir: predictably unclad, barefoot,and empty stomached

Couldn’t even afford a few left over morselsfrom last nights’ meal


Puts yoke on a pair of skeletal oxen.Vacant, nothing to do now. Nothing to do

yesterday, or tomorrow.Yet expecting the barren red soil, a gift of the

forefathers,would at last speaklashed by the angry iron of the plough.And Rahimuddin opens the shutters of his shop

and sweeps the dirt out.

Last night the mice ate into his store of pulses.

The executioner has no special dress, no family tree,no name, place or postal address. A bloated

smile plays on his lipsDisplaying in its ebb and flowA varied conflict of countless waves.Geographic landmarks are etched on the historyof the land and time.

Birth on the gift of a moment, death of aparticular day,

The neck waits under a raised blade, as languageFinds similes under a guillotine,And courage and the integrity of words; andAn honest trade in return.But in your effort to dig out a graveAnd hide Jamir’s remains in it, you have

forgotten the Twenty First.But tell me, has the day forgotten you?

– Syed Manzoorul Islam

* The Twenty-First February: Title editor’s.1390

1390

Kushtia, Rasulpur; red earth, an ochre ornament;sleep wakes to crawl and sit at the verandah’s edge.Dawn breaks; today is Pahela Boishakh; at the courtyard’s

edge a pile of unwashed pots and pans; a pregnant woman’sblood-smeared torn sari; by its side a pack of mangy dogssaliva-drool running past jawlines into the dust.

Today is Pahela Boishakh. Dawn breaks. Amena’s motherdiarrhea-vomiting since last night. Fever. Incantations,holy water; from the joist hangs a fearful breath;

two blood-red eyes flung from Hell.On Rasulpur’s east, at the bend of the village path, thatcenturies-old witness, the bot tree, trembles slightly,

on bone-dry branches swoop down thirteen vultures.Yesterday when Khaleq tilled the south patch of land,the plough blade hit and awakened human skulls

not one not two, but thousands, noiseless.Today is Pahela Boishakh. A warm windpauses at the village’s edge, at the old cremation ground.

The rice spills when the cat’s body brushes the pot;licks its lips; a titmouse makes a nest within the ribcage.Over the field a ridged path slowly wends its way

from village to distant village. Over all of Rasulpur, su

lightıerupts by degrees. Brain matter melts to run from sulls.ıThe red earth will be fertile this year. Pahela Boshakh;ıon hearing the dawn azan Fatima’s father opens

is eyes.


Breaking the fence in a single bound leap three foxes,braided women’s hair swing freely, on this mad morning.

Day lengthens. Round that witness bot tree fly a thousand vultures.Plowing skulls. Mustard. The sun-wind laughs out,spreading its flashing tongue to enter the village.

– Khademul Islam

Startled

My heart fills with a galaxy of stars,Someone hurt somewhere at some point in time,A few flowers watered by tears,Someone’s voice circling the air in a lament,The words of some trembling behind a veil of leaves,

All gather to breathe all over my heart;

I am shaken by a momentary shiver of fear.

– Kaiser Haq

Rabiul Husain

Rape and Remembrance

The health stone is on the ring of finger,The cotton buttons are in the silvery shirt,The jug of water is full of liquid glass,The grave is born after the body stops andSlides into the deep deep earth.

There is no one except ManWho is so mournful and deaf, like a river.

The abstract art of clouds is in the sky,The trees and the little deer are helplessIn the waterfall.The dew turban of durba grassKindles the evening lamp.In the early morningThe family of fishesLies in the deep pond, andCruel and dumb Nature standsOutside the room, independent.

The proud semen and tenderness of ManAre on the mountain top,Their foreheads touch its snow white blanket,Up and above, spreads a net of airOr a ladder along the road of lifeTo reach the emptiness.

The world keeps everything recorded in –Architecture, books, fossilsOnly, it does not keep the signature, whatsoever,Of rape and remembrance in theLiving bodies of women and rivers.


Rafiq Azad

Chunia, My Arcadia

A name so fragile,seems it’ll burst on your lipsdispersing her natural charms –Chunia is only a hamlet, tinyyet inwardly robust enoughto resist a civilizationbristling with missiles.

*Chunia is quiet at midnightfor she loves the serene full moon;Chunia’s solitary green is trulyBuddhist in nature;Chunia is a five mile stretch of aboriginal land.

Chunia has never seen any ferocity.Does Chunia panic at the noise of guns?Do all the leaves on trees cry out in protestat the ferocity of human beasts?Chunia loves mankind.

Chunia’s people live happilyin the company of trees.Chunia is a presence stillin civilized minds in society.A few still nurturean intimate Chunia in their heart of hearts.

Chunia knows how to nurse,Chunia can tie a bandage, Chunia is all solace –

Chunia, I know, never hurts anyone;Chunia is a peaceful deep green – she loves peace,and so she hurls intense hatred at the tree felling lumberjack.Chunia dislikes screams,Chunia does not like to hear gunshots.

Chunia is terribly innocentin matters of bloodshed, thrones, et cetera;Chunia is always counsellingthat missiles invented by man ıbe dumped in theediterranean. ıChunia wants man to wash his bloodhands clean ıin the water covetg three quarters of the earth ıand then take lessons fr her. ıChunia is always saying the world’s fam

sbattlefields ıshould planted with sweet smelling flowers.

*ıChunia has her pride. ıShe is partial to womennd children; ıshe is averse to human civilizaion, having seen ıthe wholesale massacref women and children.ıChunia is not pessimis

c, she after all eeps alight the lamp of pe night and day. ıChun has faith: ıthat people

ill at last

ecome good neighbours,forgetting rage and hate.

– Kaiser Haq


Art and Hunger

My dog, back from solitary investigations:‘Lord, mankind doesn’t reallycare for flowers; they love the smellof bread and vegetables much more. Still,raising doleful invocations –O Rose! My Rose! – is their habit.This was explained to mein an hour long spielby a woman lovely as a rose.’

– Kaiser Haq

Love

A blind womanstandingin front of a massive doorlocked tight & heavyas mercury –

wrong key in hand

– Kaiser Haq

Give Me Rice, You Sonofabitch

I am terribly hungry: inside my bellyand throughout my body, every moment, I feela ravenous hunger. Like fields of grainscorched by heat and drought,the body burns with hunger pangs.

If I get two square meals a dayI’ll ask for nothing more. There are manyasking for lots of things, everybodywants a house, a car and loads of money –some may crave name and fame,but I ask for very little:my stomach’s burning right across –I want boiled rice – I’m saying it right out –I don’t care if it’s hot or cold,fine-grained or the coarse redsort sold at government ration shops –I want my earthen bowl filled with rice,two square meals a dayand I’ll ask for nothing more.

I have no unreasonable desires –not even the desire for sex. I haven’t askedfor the sari worn low like hipstersor the person wearing it.Whoever wants her can have heror you can give her to whoever you wish.Let me just tell you I have no need for such things.

But if you can’t satisfy my simple demandmayhem will break out all over your kindom;the starving don’t care for right and wrongor law and order – without batting an eyelidI’ll devour everything in my path –nothing will be spared – everythingwill end up in the ravenous maw.If by chance I run into you,you’ll be a dainty morsel to my monstrous hunger.If the simple hunger for boiled rice


grows till it turns omnivorous,it invites a horrendous consequence.Gobbling up everything from the scenesto the observers, I’ll eventually swallowplants and trees, rivers and canals,towns and hamlets, pavements,water flowing down drains,pedestrians, broad-hipped women,the Food Minister and his flag-carrying car –to me nothing is inedible.

Give me rice, you sonofabitch –or else I’ll gobble up the map.

– Kaiser Haq

Mahadev Saha

I Was Looking for a Friend

I am looking for a friend who willshare in my grief for my father, who willtake the polluted breath from my lungs;when the ravages of winter upsurge in the cityhis face will seem a packet of green tea, wheninfectious diseases appear here and therewhen the wasting disease rends my lungs with its sharp teethlike termite-ridden currency notes,

when the police follow me aroundsuspiciously, he will throw metender bandages from a double-decker bus, will fling to mea transparent magic handkerchief. I will fly as a bird from the

police squadto the disarmament meet at Geneva and tell themI am my lover’s fugitive spy;He will come to me in the darkness like a sly thiefand take all the sthalapadma blossoms from my pockethe will whisper in my ear, that impossible rogue,

– Come on, let’s go see the night show.And then he will constantly take me to the wrong address.Still that awful rogue will share in all my mistakeshe will record all his sins in my diary,bearing my sins in hand he will enter a church with the pride of

a priest.Everywhere in this city of Dhaka: the Press Club, the restaurants,

the RacingGrounds, I seek a friend to whom at the moment of my deathI can bequeath all these illegal treasures, this disrepute,


my debaucheries. In exchange he will forever supply me withsleeping pills

he will conceal the knife of my crimes in his heart, he willwrite to my fathersaying – Don’t worry about him, he’s such a good boy,he goes to work nine-to-five; yet he will know allmy bad habits, all the flaws of my nature.Still he will load his camera with film and go with meto take pictures of a young man who has committed suicide,

finallyhe will ride on a train travelling to some small town and descendat the wrong station;

Here and there, everywhere I have been looking for a friendwho will take me to hunt deer in the Sundarbans, who will pick outthe precious parts from the antlers and the transparent hooves, as ifhe will make buttons out of the hidden hooves, he willmake loans to me everyday out of simple greed. Hereand there, in all the familiar places of the city I look for thatartless accomplice; everyday for all my life I advertise for a friendbut, alas, my blood groupnever matches with anyone else.

– Shabnam Nadiya

Life

Who could I go to with this noticeabout something I had lost?Who would I detain for a minuteand say: look, Sirs, I am very upset.Back in my room from a late night filmI can no longer find my map anywhere.

Could any of you, kind gentlemen,tell me anything about the whereabouts

of my map?

The world was like the terribly busy passengersof a local train:

getting on and getting off at each station,while keeping a sharp eye

on the accompanying baggage.

Here in this world there was no onewith whom you could stop a moment.All the world seemed to be rushing

on a bicycle.

No one had a moments’ leisure,day and night the buying and selling went on,the speeches and statements,and endless talk on the state of politics.Who in this world would look for my map

and restore it to me?

So with my Lost notice stuckon my heartI roamed the streets all alone.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Nirmalendu Goon

This Day I Haven’t Come to Shed Blood

Like all of you present here I love roses a lotWhile crossing the Race Course field yesterdayOne of the roses blooming thereSaid to me; “Make your verse sing of Sheikh Mujib”I’m here to sing of him

A bloodstained brick that hadFallen from the Shahid Minar told me yesterday“Make your verse sing of Sheikh Mujib”I’m here to sing of him.

Like everyone present here I love to see Palash trees bloomingWhile crossing the Sangbad’s office yesterdayA newly bloomed palash whispered in my ear“Make your verse sing of Sheikh Mujib”I’m here to sing of him.

The water sprinkling from Shahbagh Avenue’s fountainCried out to me“Make your verse sing of Sheikh Mujib”I’m here to sing of him.

Like all of you here I am partial to dreaming and to loveAn intrepid dream that came to me last night told me“Make your verse sing of Sheikh Mujib”I’m here to sing of him.

Let all of you heartbroken people assembled on this spring dayLet all the still, dried up, unsuspecting,Not-yet-blossomed Krishnachura sprigs listen intently

Let the dark cuckoo that will perch on the treeIn the darkening light know I have kissed holy soilUnder my feet this day.I’ll be faithful to the pledgeI have made to the Palash this dayI’ll be faithful to the pledgeI’ve made to my visionI haven’t come here to shed blood this dayI’ve come here only to sing of my love for him.

– Fakrul Alam

What Sin Would Redeem Me

I have never tasted the fruitof the forbidden tree,I have been waiting. waiting.like the sea that waits for the river,or the river for the surging tide,in the remote hopethat a feeling would curt upfrom within the rocksand set my heart ablaze with passion.

I have never been to a brothel,nor ever wallowed in that forbidden pleasure,I have been waiting, waiting –I like the revolution that brews and simmersand waits impatiently for the climactic hour,or like the heaving bosom of a young maidenawaiting her first love.

I have never slept with any pleasure girl


in the hopethat love, like the sea monsterchurning the sea in a violent mating duel,would teach me the art.

Tell me, O wise soul, please do,what sin would redeem me.


Firearm

There is a big crowd at the Police Station.Suspicious soldiers in the city are taking away all firearms.Frightened citizens, in accordance with military

directives, are depositing their shotguns,rifles, pistols and cartridges like promised offerings

at some holy shrine. On the tablelay the saint’s hand like a flower.

Only I disobeying the military directive,turned a mild rebel. I am openly returningto my room, and yet with me restsa terrible firearm like the heart.I didn’t surrender it.

– Kabir Chowdhury

Ruby Rahman

Left Behind

A century’s dialecticpushed and pulled at us.Sweet grass was left, vacation spots were left,

the amazing nightat the Dak Bungalow at Chunaru Ghat,

the intractable moonlight of the forestlike Blake’s tiger

striped with night and mystery.Farmgate at sundown was left behind,

the long mahogany-shaded roads –left behind, left behind, they weren’t fulfilled.Accomplished hands fly away in gusts of wind,paint spills from the brush, the easel cannot hold it.The silvery sky spills over the windowand the eyes are dazzled.Still, Kant and Hegel go on sitting

grim-faced on a cane sofa.Here, the crystal-clear water of this long century’s

lake was left behind,here, our bricks, wood, paints, brushes,

hammers and chisels were left behind.Paint spills out of the paint can,

a few pennies from the pocket,all the wheelings and dealings blow away like winds

howling along the Padma River’s banks.The dialectic settles itself down in the brain cells,gets to know all the unfathomable mysteries from A to Z;verbal imagery, bricks, wood, and all the words


of our hearts remain.Our hands move from sound to voices, from voices

to the can of paint;accomplished hands give overwhelming life but they can’t staystill.Wind from the Padma River’s bank comes charging in pursuit,the translation of roses remains unfinished for years on end;beneath broken moonlight, the Acropolis lies in ruins.There, the city waking up at evening is left behind;above the commotion of Topkhana Road

the flowering, boundless twilightand our sitting face to face, all left behind.

– Carolyne Wright with Syed Manzoorul Islam

I Didn’t Keep My Word

I don’t keep my word I don’t keep my word;even to myself I didn’t keep my wordso I don’t keep my word with anyone.

Between my mother and meıthere was only one word we undestood,ıthat I wouldn’t give heed to what my eye

nd ears told me. ıFiling the sky at dawnıwith the one single word in

blue expanseılike a immense lotus with its petals opened wide, ıI’ll fill up my oom wi one word such as this; ıbut I didn’t keep my word.ıThe wor

was: let mine and your and their children’s ıblue cricket fied ıand the lines of those flushed facesıgo unharmed. Wen blind headless time ıstretches forth its hand lik

a ghostwe’ll instill courage and genuine sun;but we didn’t keep our word.We’ll give the word the office of chief queen,we’ll give it the keys to the kingdom, we’ll give it the crown,we’ll give mango blossoms, cuckoos

and the first month of spring,we’ll break the words into bits and make them up again.In the darkness of the mine of words lies meaning,a thousand and one meanings – I’ll make them leave homeand go outside in the sun;but I didn’t keep my word.I’ve given the word swathed in tears and bloodto parents and children,to the word itself, to dreams and birds; ıbut I dn’t keep those words.ıI d

n’t keep my word I don’t keep my word; ıeven to myse I didn’t keep my ordıso I don’t keep my word now withanyone.

– Carolyne Wright with Syed Manzoorul Islam


Humayun Azad

The Red Train

Past towns and hamlets it comes, shaking up the entire country,the Red Train,

Flying a flapping flag it comes, that long-talked-about Red Train(For which the platform has been anxiously waiting for ages).

The Red Train takes to the street as a procession of demonstrators,Takes to the fields as the ploughman’s plough,Turns into blood-red flags on rooftops,Placards in people’s hands.

The Red Train advances windingly,Advances taking noteOf ramshackle homes, bright alluvial riverbanks, tall mansions.

The Red Train turns into rice on the dinner plateAnd a patchwork quilt at night,The Red Train is Poetry, tractors,The Red Train turns suddenly into a cottage,The Red Train is the slogan shouted in the street,The Red Train turns in an instant into song.

Past towns and hamlets, shaking up the entire country, comesthe Red Train.

– Hamid Bhuiyan

Curfew

What, after all, could you do then, or I for that matter?The evening was spread all around, with all its harsh rules and

regulations;an ailing bird was screeching intermittently, like a shrill siren.Stepping out into the street was forbidden, or even looking out;What could we do that evening, you and I, except look at eachother?

Unable to react, the city was quivering, you were crumblinglike an earthen cottage, I was collapsing like the Shaheed Minar.The evening spread outside, with all its rules and regulations:What could we do after all, except hold each other in a

tight embrace?

The bars shut, and not a drop of water in the waiting room.From the soles of your feet rose glittering red thirst,down the synapses in my brain descended long summery thirst.What could we do then, in the lonely evening with sirens

all around,except press our lips to each other and from the deepest

well of bloodceaselessly drink the coolest water of from within the earth?

Leave aside a bed, there wasn’t even a bench anywhere in sight.The night spread all around, with the curfew on, rifles, harsh

rules and regulations.

The damp floor was as cruel as a tyrant: what could we doafter all, Kasturi, except make mattresses of each other’s bodiesand warning the entire room, for the first time truly sleep

uninterrupted all night long?

– Hamid Bhuiyan


Abul Hasan

An Uncivil Philosophy

Buildings rise, that’s politics, buildings fall, that, too,

The fire axe cuts away the deodars, that is politics too,It is because of politics that roses bloom and roses wither

It is also politics that people are being born and dyingFace down, helpless in the sun of youththe sister is undoing her braidsHiding the bees of her bosom in her hand – that, too, is politics

Because of politics the youths are going to pot, againThere are clashes, wars and tyrannies, the engulfingblood of buildings

The pain of spattered semen, joyless copulationFoetus running in women’s blood, again the fire

Is teeming in the guise of a crisis,Yes, it’s politics,nothing but politics!

Alone I am roaming the bloody streets of poverty with faminein my pocket

I am starving to death, that is politics too, andIt is desolate all around now, choked with the

poisonous gas of anguish,

I am watching the snake dance of a sly fatalsnake woman

Is this politics too?– A. B. M. Masud Mahmood with Tapan Jyoti Barua

Coal

At both ends I burn equally: first, for ages in the wombof earth,

Then in your factoryWhen you haul things

I feel another fire within, in the furnace and in the machine!I burn so much, breaking the erotic embrace of the earth!None else I know burns so much!

The forest so vast, such a run of wilderness, history,None has so much burning, and no resentment so smoldering!the smoldering hunger under the earth

At both ends I burn equally: my heart burns grain by grainto fine dust

Oh I go on enduring silently. Yet never will they let me bediamond, never!

No, they won’t; see, what they’ve done to me:Pouring unholy fire into my soulThey have vainly turned me into dead ashes, in the iron,

in the engineDoes this fire touch you ever?

– A. B. M. Masud Mahmood withTapan Jyoti Barua

The Crippled Patriot

The right hand, that once held peace in its gripIs now gone;Gone in a fuckin’ explosionNow I hold war and darkness in the left


With the seven crore luckless lifelines of my people on my palmI lie prostrateHelpless I lie,Bullets knocked off my kneecapsWounds festerWith teeming platoons of maggotsMy knees acheI can’t walk any more now;

The setting sun is giving a last touchTo the endless flag in the deepening dark;I have far to goFar far to go!

– A. B. M. Masud Mahmood with Tapan Jyoti Barua

Dilara Hashem

Love

Whatever wasn’t saidlet it be put away.

Like jamdani sarees long foldedand left in storagemy heart has given way along the folds.From the long waitlove turned sour like leftover rice

fermented in a water pot,passion’s candle burned down to its end.Without the fingers’ gentle touchthe tanpura’s strings got rusted.

How long did you not spread mulch in the garden?The heart is not a tulipto bloom on its own in answer to summer.You thought love is perennialblooming as usual in disaffection and neglecteven covered with ice and snowit will be there, wrapped in the mantle of soil.That was your mistake.

You thought that like an expensive stereodecorating the roomlove would waituntil you wished to turn it onand it would play as your heart desired.

But that’s not so;love’s not a machine –


telephone and emailcan’t keep it alive.

You thought everything would stayas it was before,that is your mistake.

Love is not ethereal,it needs organic chemistry.

– Carolyne Wright

Sajjad Quadir

Recognised Border

It’s a time,a time – you’ll be living outside it.

Windows though remain wide openyou won’t look at a distanceyou won’t draw your curtains

not exactly the indifferencenot exactly the opportunismnot that you’re throwing yourself within you.

It’s a timeyou are to bear everything.

It’s an agewith borders drawn around its sphereand you’re to stand there

you may dare to do the wrong,you may know the easy tactics of violation.Maybe, you’re recklessly driven by your desiresyet you’re to recognise your boundaries.

Going ahead?If you think it the way you’re to treadno wall stands before youno broken bridgeno killer yet you’ll stop stepping ahead.

It’s timeyou refrained yourself


from taking the opportunityof going ahead

A timeyou’re to make yourselfbearable to you

A timeyou’re to stand alonebeyond the grip of timeand allurement.

– Mohammad Nurul Huda

Kashinath Roy

Noah’s Ark

My nightmaresquatting on the breast of sleep –in the small hoursof last night

I lay watching:churning the three realmsthe deluge rises foaming and frothing,and my terror-stricken homeland –my Bangladesh –cowering beneaththe raised paw of complete ruin.

Just then the great ark of Noah the prophetcomes caressing the despondent horizonand lovingly docks at my head.The mild instructions of ever-merciful Allahresounded in my distraught consciousness.In order to build a post-deluge communityI picked upfrom Creation’s motley throngone by one, in couples, whatever thrivesin our homeland’s discommoded soil:peasants, workers, students, intellectualstycoons, merchants, grocers, ministers,sentries, bureaucrats, officials,newspapers and newsmen,policies and policy-makers,poets, artists, lovers;


with bated breathI picked up a couple of country footpathsand a couple of hamlets.

Heaving a sigh of relief, as I was aboutto break into a song of regenerationaddressed to the future motherland,the distressed conscience of the nationbroke through the waves and begged meto restrain myselfwith gaze fixed on the crowded heart of Noah’s ark.Following that gaze my two eyesabruptly staggered to a halt.Both hands pressed to my head, I sawa fatal illness curled around the breastof my salvaged land, swinging merrily:malnourished peasant, deunionized worker,shortsighted students and intellectuals,bogus industrialists, merchants, grocers,thuggish minister, sentry, bureaucrat, official,newspaper crushed under bad news,newsman troubled by commercialism,unprincipled policy-maker,poet without prosody,painter without form,passionless lovers.Even the carefree river is choked with sewage,the footpaths bear chest wounds,the hamlets are stricken with illness and sorrow.

Suppressing a cry of intolerable anguish,one by one, I threw the wretched cargo overboardinto the omnivorous currents of the deluge,

and attempting to control a sighlike a python’s hiss, my handfalling on the chest gave me a shock:other than variegated scarsand impotent rageand the stifling pressure of faithlessnessit felt nothing.Raising limp hands in prayer to Khuda almighty.

I begged forgivenessand plunged into the turbulent waves . . .

Bearing a void in its heart,Hazrat Noah’s hopeless arkdrifted towards an unknown destination.

– Kaiser Haq


Selim Sarwar

Bangladesh: December 1973

Something’s swimming in your eyes – something horribly slimy–jellyfish? snake?

Something black’s taking off from the eyebrows – raven? owl?bat? the emissary of death?

Spread open the palms, let me see the lips –fungus covers the lines of the hand,stubborn pimples cover the lips!

I hear you’re the proverbial queen, yours the Madonna’s glory,your touch turns everything into gold,

when you loosen your dense hair, there is a downpour,moonlight when you take off your bra;

you’re the deep green of life, the redness of blood.

Then why this fever gripping your whole body?This disease in every vein and artery?Such sorrow in your breast, this sickly yellow pallor on the skin?Aren’t they yours – arms forged in the current of rivers,

flowing with healing powers?And a saree edged with sunlight in which a wealth of crops frolics?

Giving the lie to all gilded myths, all fragrant fairytales,in those large, dark, melancholy eyessomething’s swimming, something horribly slimy –hunger and want? sin? a black adder? a curse?

– Kaiser Haq

Confessional

No, I haven’t attained the single-mindedness of thelegendary poets

Though I’ve repeatedly sat in rapt meditationon words, as if the syllables were secret mantras,the images sacred icons – as soon as Lifesuddenly sounded its tambourine at high noon,my concentration snapped and I ran, and all the wordsof otherworldly loveliness – distracted marblesof a restless boy – rolled uncared-for through transient dust.

Whenever I was single-mindedly burning purificatory incensein the church of radiant, timeless and transcendental art,its sacred aroma inevitably blended with the very differentodour – tasting of corrosive decadence,like that of overripe apples – the intoxicating odour of women.

No, the even-handed, godlike vision of great artistswas never mine, which is why I’ve always wantedto feel with my own fingersthe ruddy tint of sunrise and sunset,the green of foliage and the warmth of bird feathers,the exquisite juiciness of pomegranates,the sliminess of a terror-stricken fishhiding somewhere in her bodythe holy virgin of her artistic glory

An intense unremitting hungerand too much of uncontrollable greeddrove me from the garden of orderly art, the cold vestibuleof the temple of transcendental art


to the spittle-sprayed soup kitchen of everyday desires.

No, I’m not one of the great artists – their enviable indifferenceis beyond me and so I raise before lifethe beggar’s arrogant finger.

– Kaiser Haq

Mohammad Nurul Huda

A Big Farewell

My groping fingers bump against your bodywherever I lay them.

From the dense forest to the breathless sea,I always see you.You blink like a red and green signalat every crossroadsor at every bend of this ageing world.

Yet there is nausea in every human heart,flowers held on palms fade fast,Destiny changes like fleeting timeand from the pillow in my beddrift fluffy balls of cotton.

Walking away from the blue beach,walking against the windsomeone writes with his fingers on thebright canvas of the sky:

‘Shutanuka, a big farewell to you too from today.’


The Cultivation of Love

Rain is falling from clouds of loveand farming is underwayin a three-acre plot of land;

you are growing like rice shoots


and your fertile mental world is growing too –beneath it lies gold:

such human soil never lies fallowand farming it is no sin.

– Hamid Bhuiyan

Zahidul Huq

Wish

If I were an idle April noonI would go and watch in your eyesSome blades of grass.Sad musical bells,I would go and dance with your rhythmic feet,Weeping tears of blood,and suddenly an April firewould burst into flames.If I were a copper coloured telegraph wireI would relay to you all my failures,any unfinished songs,grief stricken flowers.Oh, if I were only a little boyin this month of impossible desires.

– Kabir Chowdhury


Khondakar Ashraf Hossain

Tango

The sun and the raintake their turn to whirl

in a mad tangofrom one end of the watery marshto the other.

The cloud figure skateson the swaying aman sheaves.Touching the boat’s prow

on the dark waters of the beelthe turbulent cloud hoofs up a

flamenco swirl,long hair

floating in frenzied glee.

Strange!But I’m no longer

impressed by the absurd: I oftenhave to preside over the wedding

of a swan and a crocodile.

Nonchalant, I watch the laudugi snakeput on a new dress on its birthday.

As the fishes die.

The village Shylock sits in a yogic mudraon top of a kalmi creeper:

He seems an old wizardglimmering in a water drop

on a glossy arum leaf.

The otter dances a frenzied tango.As the shore cries in a rainy chorus,a fishbone pierces the otter’s heart.

The Victor

You’ll never know the taste of sadnessor how I walk the corridors of day and night –

acrid taste of grief on my tongue.You’ll never know the calm

inside the soft kernel, the stone.Your immaculate palate knows only

the barren sweetness of the grape.You’ll never presume to knowthe mighty sadness of its sour core.

O love, never pity the forsaken,or deck rejection with plumes of glory.

The sea longed to embrace the sky:turned down, it pours in tears:

The watery prayers of the earthly grass could hardlybring it down –

The cloud collapses under its own weight of grief !

Think not I’m defeated and you have won:Defeated you are as well.

Your pride has defeated you, not me !Think not I’m void just because

I come to you again and again.Think of the river that travels down to the sea.Would you say, for lack of water?He is full of water, yet longs to wallow


in the saline water of the sea.I have extracted the sea salt from your beauty:

Lack of tears is only a fiction –Who knows that better than you?

Zarina Akhtar

Entity

I won’t be caught in any other fisherman’s net –the stronger their meshthe more slippery my body.

This wild water is my silvery abode,mingled with my body;from amidst the stench of fish

the fragrance of my entity wells up.

From the shore, the hands of greedy fishermenfling the net,

but I’m no longer so feverish, broken or close to deaththat I’ll let myself be chopped to pieces

in the curry bowl.

My strength has defeated those fishing nets –and this water is mine.

– Carolyne Wright with Tahmina Begum (Sattar)

No Directives

I’ll go as far as I can –then in exhaustion I’ll pause.I’ll pass the time tossing pebbles in still water,wander alone across the open fields, laugh aloud

to my heart’s content,or else with gloomy eyes I’ll embezzle

the twilight horizon.But still I won’t go anywhere against my will.


If I want I’ll open my eyes and stare,I’ll look for marvels in the new world of the dawnor turn away in scorn from civilization’s

lack of taste.I’ll lose myself in the crowd of countless choresor pass the days in lazy lethargy –My life will go by, free from all directives;in it, all the pages of advice will remain untried.I’ll take no lessons from my ancestors’

exalted way of life.

And love!If anyone surrenders his heart and says, “Love me,”even then there’ll be no compromise –I can’t go against my will.

– Carolyne Wright with Tahmina Begum (Sattar)

Daud Hyder

Sixth January, Mother’s Death Anniversary

On Mother’s death anniversarymy thoughts turned to my memories.Three syllables clamoured in my bloodand every sac of my body.

Scenes floated up like islands,luminous with the laughter ofinfancy and childhood together,such as would make Aphroditeindifferent to even Zeus’ embrace,the glory of which was too greatfor Ethiopia or Olympus to sustain.Now here, on a Juhu afternoon,sunlight is writing a story in verse;A tale of birth and rebirth is shapingon my dark dry lips, the consequence ofwhich is grief, tears, fountains, rivers

(2)

I launched my ship on southern seas,and, my destination being unknown,sailed north to east, east to west,southwest. Through the fury of waterI traversed ravines and mountain defilescoming at last to a shaded forest glade.A crystal clear spring flows herebeside a narrow, subterranean opening.


(3)

This may seem a tale very much likeHomer’s account of Odysseus’ journeyto Hades. But no, not so, hellish terrorsare not for me to describe nor shall I tellwho came running up to me, eager for news ofrelatives or friends or how heavily sorrowweighed on me as I related the fates of some.

(4)

No sooner did I enter than the news ofmy coming spread through the ether,although my journey to the underworldwas inadvertent. It was as if I were amessenger from the gods and could rescueand restore to the regions of rain eachand every suffering soul. When I saw themmy eyes brimmed with tears of pity and pain.In my singularity I shook from head to footas a ship, a tree or a stone is shaken bythe wildness of storm and wind.

(5)

My mother approached. She was worn and thinand pale. But no. I did not see my father.Perhaps he had forgotten the village, the house,the room, the children or it could be he wasbusy, absorbed in composing srutis.I went down on my knees, to my mother,as people kneel to recite the namajor bow their heads on prayer rugs.

Stripping myself of every stitch of diffidence,barebodied as a baby boy, I leapt into her lap.And she whispered, as her hands rose reverentlybetween her eyes, “May this child of mine,son of my country, thrive on milk and rice.”

(6)

It was on my way back that my shipbroke up. Mast, oars, deck boardsdrifted off. But on my hands restedthe steady, quiet Helmsman’s Hand.

– Lila Ray


Shihab Sarkar

Days and Nights of a Botanist

A fragrance wafts about in the air. Its source remains buriedby day in stench and acid smells of deadly fumes. A whirlpoolthickened by sweat, charred villages, a half burnt corpse in thebarren field. Yet his late night dreams are filled with a strangesmell that only a holy man or a love lorn virgin can give off.

On summer nights as he wakes up thirsty, he finds his bedstrewn with leaves and flowers that kissed the Earth a millionsprings ago. He had been to the forest that swayed with theshrieks of Cro Magnon couples making love, when the worldbecame a vast primitive bush dissolving into a moon litcourtyard mesmerised by the chants of gyrating Bengal Sufis.

Day breaks into his room in a surge of smells – fetid and sickening.Days are a horror – stifling, with fangs. He can only breathe as hefeels the wafting nocturnal fragrance and the images. It keeps himebullient throughout the day.

Buddha and Balmiki in Airport Road

Further from Farmgate, beside Airport Road,Buddha met Balmiki.It was less noisy in this area, there mightEven be a lotus-lake nearby, or a dead river,Humps of earth, trees, earthen pathways, solitaryScattered, serpentine

Buddha was arriving on foot, alone.

When he saw the Primal Poet fast approachingHe said, coming via London, New York, London,I’ve just landed in Dhaka of the Orient.How green! How green! said the former prince ofKapilavastu as he plucked some leaves from a bushBy the side of the road, gazed at them for a long while andwonderedHow similar were these toThe tree of knowledge?

A storm arises in the west, Buddha has arrived in Atish’s Bengal,Where hundreds of disciples have sat in the solitary schools oflearningAnd meditated on peace.

In the thin light of evening in Airport RoadAs he watched a soft white light illumineThe thin, contemplative face of Buddha, Balmiki asked,“I hope you’ll stay awhile in Bengal?”Buddha remained silent. Then, “Listen, Oh Poet,What is that cry?”

Balmiki glanced at the darkened field“I don’t know, I don’t know, Oh king of kings,”He covered his face with hands, and knees bentKnelt on the ground.Behind a bush five young men were gnawing atA woman all skin and bones

Balmiki left the way he had arrived, fleet of footBuddha stood there unmoving, bewildered, in this Atish’s Bengal.

– Shabnam Nadiya


Abid Azad

My Poems Belong to No One Else

My poems belong to the young boyfrom whose throat blood drips constantly like clusters of red rosesMy poems belong to the young manbetween whose lips golden ravings hum like a swarm of bees

My poems belong to the young girlwho glimpses the severed head on a silver platter covered in

saffron cloth

My poems belong to the young womanwho slits open the flesh beneath her breasts with a bladeseeking the blue scarf wound around the neck of a gilded bird

My poems belong to those wandererswhose crazy beds leap into midnight alleys terrorized

by moonlight

My poems belong to that scruffy-haired madmanwhose flying window falls as it becomes as cold as a

sudden scream, as long and shapeless as ice

My poems belong to no one elsethey’re mine, mine, mine, only mine.

– Shabnam Nadiya

Fear

I’m scared . . .

Auntie, your scent has driven away sleep,

now turn over, lie on the other side,within you blow strange breezes amidst strange moonlight,within you is the salty tang of thick jungle,large leaves fall with the rustling noise of ghostly footsteps.Why do lantern flames dance in your eyes?Are you a fairground? an attic? a scattering

of shelled peanuts?Why are you loading my handswith the tender flame of ice pellets?The heat of the hair in your nostrils

will burn me . . . burn me up . . .If I am burnt to ashes, will you scatter them

with your breath?Auntie, I’m shit scared, put me down . . .

Won’t mother get angry if she sees?

– Hamid Bhuiyan


Tridib Dastidar

Terror

Terror is hatching an egg,the unwanted child’s eyes are shutboth inside and out.When it opens its eyesin a future worldit’ll find its arms and legs are hostageto a crazy creature called Man.The skies are helpless,the dream pathways are no longer safe,even on the way to school, guardians are strangely anxious,the letters of the alphabetare being carried to hospital on stretchers,the counter-revolutionary’s ransom demandat the other end of the phone line,and the image of a bullet on banknotes.

Terror is hatching an egg,inside it too is the tremor of wings,it’s as if the ceaseless curses of bestialitywere directed at the world, at life.

– Hamid Bhuiyan

Shamim Azad

First Love

In Jamalpur, behind the Public Library,in the house near the steps down to the riverI first met you.The sky was filled with fragrance, andyouth, your song

was my first love –Perhaps because you were so young

you’d swim away so easily –before I could turn you into a verseyou eluded me again and again.All day it was like this – all night, all dayI looked for you through that curtain of smoke.

After a while, profoundly weary, I lay down –suddenly a sound broke through my sleep:

even with my eyes closed I could feelthe red moonlight outside,

the sound of water in the wind,in the room.

I got up to look for the source, and youwere right next to my heart.

– Carolyne Wright with Syed Manzoorul Islam and the author


Tell Me What You’ve Lost

What have you lostthat all day you droop on the pillows?Frost covers the offerings,clouds have come to a stop,the palms of your hands are drenched with sweat,cobwebs hang motionless from the ceiling.Whatever have you lostthat harmonium, drums, tanpuralie there untouched even in the second month of rain?At the corner, the peanut-vendor boy’swet and agile feet are stunned;fungus branchesthrough stale loaves of bread.A black deer wandersrestless through the garden.Your fever has gone so higha mere touch of the thermometerwill trigger mercury’sfinal explosion.

Red and blue particles of dust in the bed,effortless gloom has settled on the threshold.Before plunging into the endlessdarkness of the new moon, tell mewhatever have you lost thatin terror and apprehensionyou’ve been completely silenced?


Abu Karim

Bonsai

Acharya Jagadishchandra Bose made friends with a wild plant.That’s how we came to know that all the trees in the forest areliving creatures. Far from human habitation plant species find acosy home in the intimate, unbreakable embrace of the forest.At the affectionate touch of Nature’s lovely dust the trees openwide their arms. Under limitless skies, each seed exploding into awidely spreading tree seeks joy in its trunk, blossoms and leaves.

The baleful gaze of certain people brings dark imprisonment tothe lives of trees. Life’s joyless, anguished growth – bonsai.

I am not one of those who find pleasure in looking at bonsai. Itreminds me of condemned prisoners. Tolstoy had asked, howmuch land does a man really need. His own answer was threeand a half cubits. Another Russian writer, Anton Chekhov, gavea very different response to Tolstoy’s answer – a corpse needsthree and a half cubits of land, but a living man needs the wholeworld.

Those who turn trees into bonsai no doubt have their own logic.Those who prevent North Korean peasants from moving totowns perhaps have some reason for doing so. I would still insist,let trees live in forests – there we can inhale our fill of their scent.We can have our fill of the sight of their foliage, flowers andfruit. Their beauty when they are in full bloom we can touchwith both hands. Don’t turn trees into bonsai.

– Hamid Bhuiyan


Hasan Hafiz

However Far You Go

So you think I’ll desist if you just cross the Atlantic?The human mindis faster than the speed of lightyour heart shall remain imprisoned withinmy own.In between, the ignorance of millions of nautical mileslies solitary and tormentedlike a beggar in afflicted pitymy debts remain unpaidyour debts remain unpaid

No matter how far you goflying across the Atlantic or the Pacificyour roots still remain within my heartyour heart and mindcaptivewithin the jailhouse of my soul !

~ Shabnam Nadiya

Dilara Hafiz

So Many Days on the Road

So many days you made me wander on the road.Though you said we’d share an addressso far you haven’t given even that.For some reason or for none at all

you made me wander on the road.The length of my life remainsconfined in your collection of golden keys,sickly from morning till noonand tearful in the perplexingtime of afternoon . . .

I’ve kept within mesome of your conversations suffused with memory,a few roses tinged deep red,two or three books of poetry– Sunil’s or Shakti’s, I don’t remember which –you gave me on my birthday.But I want to give them back to youon this solitary night.

– Carolyne Wright with Latifa Ahmed and the author


Girls Beside the Road

Four young girls bede the ad ıpick flowers and make flower

hains. ıAt eveni

and night four girlsdaring the monsoon rains.For the buyers who love their flowersthey join blossoms of different colors,stringing garlands on long threadsthey arrange displays of flowers.Their giggles glow like vermilion.Four girls earn their riceand the clothes on their backs like this.

As they grow older in this waythey display their bodies like flowers.Four girls along the roadburn in the sun of reality,starving all year long –their maiden flowers float away.Ah, the hunger that devours all:four girls with no home or hearthin the thorny bush of sorrow.In the dark of night each one aloneseeks death at the edge of her body.


Shahera Khatun Bela

This Blunder Wrapped in Silk

This I burned in the conflagration of your mightand you became my lord in a moment’s delight.Sometimes in your sombre face

the fountain’s water flows by,sometimes only sinless blood rolls down the sky.Can I blossom, an obstinate flower

in grape’s milk?That I did not receive you earlier –

a blunder wrapped in silk.

– Carolyne Wright with Mohammad Nurul Huda

You’re in My Core

The blooming rose of time has sobbed,as if here the flower-dialogue were robbed!I’ve never been happy in this world;still, let roses bloom throughout the world.

The monsoon months pour down in this meadow,in this wood;

still, memories will never recede.I know there’s no all-triumphant domain.You’re in my core, call me by any name.



Rudro Mohammad Shahidullah

Smell of Corpses in the Breeze

Even now I get a whiff of rotting corpses in the breeze,Even now I see the nude dance of death in the earthEven now in my drowsy moments I hear the agonized cry

of the rapedHas this country forgotten those nightmarish nights,

those gory days?

Smell of rotting corpses drifts in the breeze,The soil is indelibly bloodstained.Those who once swore an oath on this bloodstained earthSeek the forbidden darkness in life’s purulent discharges.Today they love the unlit cage and stay awake in the

cave of night.

It seems to be a teenage mother stricken with shameOver an illegitimate birth,Freedom – is it an illegitimate birth, then?

Is it the fatherless product of a mother’s shame?

That old vulture has dug its talons into the national flag.

Smell of rotting corpses in the breeze –And yet, in neon light the nautch girl’s body is a tempest offleshy delights.Bloodstains on the earth –And yet the bones of starved people are stacked in rice godowns.

Sleep avoids my eyes. I lie sleepless all night –If I doze I hear the anguished cries of the raped,Rotting corpses float like water hyacinth on the river,

The grotesque, headless corpse of a girl devoured by dogsFloats before my eyes – I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep . . .Wrapped in the winding sheet of blood – devoured by dogs,

by vultures,Is my brother, my mother, my beloved father.Freedom – the only kinsman I’ve found after losing my kinsfolk,Freedom – the priceless fruit bought with the blood of

my dear ones.

My raped sister’s saree – that’s my blood-soaked national flag.

– Hamid Bhuiyan


Farida Sarkar

What Love Is This?

The young man told the Magistratethat he’d offered her his love,and when he was refused, he chosea course of merciless revenge.

What love is thisthat drags the beloved out into the streetand pays the homage of ultimate dishonour?Or with inhuman crueltyinflicts the most horror-filled

agonizing death?

If love inspires us to life,if love’s other name is sacrifice,if it is to live, to create,then what love is thiswhich is death and destruction’s synonym;what love is this, where a woman’s hearthas no place, onlyher body that they seize

and divide among themselves?

How many Daisies will diebefore their time, in the murderousgreedy paws of that so-called lovebefore the padlocks on our conscience open?And how many Shabmeherswill have to make their protests knownalone, alone, at the cost of their lives?

Will the day never comewhen all the voices and resolute handsof every woman and manobstruct and resistthose ghouls and bloodsuckers?

– Carolyne Wright with the author


Nasima Sultana

I Was Asleep, I Was Alone

When I was asleep, I was alone – wakening betrayed me.Loneliness drips down on wakening,the water of sadness trembles in the knitting

of dishevelled wind . . .As if I gave my word to someone

that I’d go to himall my aloneness flies away sniffing the sun:I can’t keep my word I can’t!Houses fill with women and men,a band of gypsies comes up from bridges

and sandy shores;they talk and talk and talk –Amidst neurotic suffering

and with a new fountain pen,purple poetry awakens.All these on wakening . . . not exactly

living like human beings.Loneliness drips down on wakening.When I was asleep, I was alone;wakening betrayed me, wakening betrays.

– Carolyne Wright with Mohammad Nurul Huda and the author

Promise

The promise means the top of that white stone edifice,the promise means golden-hued rice,the promise means hunger’s hot wave of fire,

the promise means something more . . . somethingmore like a stone.

There was a promise in those eyes,in the blood within this heart.

Becoming the fragrance of incense, the promisewas every day fragrant,

beautiful without ambivalence.I remember I remember the horse came

and stopped at the door,red dust flew up from his insolent hooves.The promise didn’t put into my hand

a royal crown, a cummerbund, a sword,a silken vest. The promise like this just like thisin sleep on the embroidered quilt it drips like urine.

The promise means a bird’s flapping wingsscattering the dry straw of the horizon,

the promise means a self-absorbed boybefore a dead river,

the promise means the anaesthetic breakingbreaking breaking breaking,

flowing away, going away towards . . . towardsan even more alien wakening.

The promise means something more . . . somethingmore like a stone.

– Carolyne Wright with Mohammad Nurul Huda and the author


Mahmud Kamal

Meter . . . casually

Raven has stolen our Rhyme awayEnds don’t rhyme anymoreForms, betrayed and booed, lay on the sideIn despair, sans rhythm

“Need a new perspective, a new theme”Screams a new poet in his own, old landWith a hammer and . . . not a pen on himPaper Queens sit right before their dressersOffering a lot of nuances, nonsense and craftAnd yet no rhythm or rhyme

The beauties are unscented, insipid delightsDisplaying forms and formatsI want to snatch rhythm away from that cunning ravenAnd dress my beauty back to flesh . . . casually.

– Rubana

Abu Hassan Shahriar

Bird Flood

I have framed the bird-scenes in Midnapore.Bird-rain pours at random,Frantic wings take flight,O bird-clouds, watch the bird-mail carry anonymous postsTo unremitting bird-earth,Bird-fall on the tin sheds,Feathers drown the courtyard,There will be a bird-flood this year

At the end of the bird hourI craved for you two bird-secondsDoes poetry still descend upon MidnaporeOn a sunny afternoon?Does a married woman still walk homeWith the parting in her hair markedBy the sindur of Midnapore dust?

Civilization hunts with arrows, tools and technology,Bird song’s suffering an exile,The opium of melody on CD ROM,Do bird crops grow in Midnapore?Feathers drown the courtyard,This will be a year of bird floods.

– Rubana


Masud Khan

Rain

It’s rainingOver distant landsOver Brahma’s world,

Over Rangpur and Bogra’s vast expanseIn alluvial plains,The rain veils Burma’s evening fieldsAnd keeps streaming down.

And below these lightning flashes,At the rain-formed night’s third quarterRadiant facesSpring up at home or abroadLike hyperactive frogs leapingInto the unknown.

Provoked by thunder and lightning’s violent outburstsAllured by their promises,In the thick veilAnd swirling stream,In the darkness of the wet wind,In the eastern expanse,Underneath the skyIn vast and empty fieldsUnder the vast spread-out arum fields of the east.Incredibly, unformed new nations emergeInnumerable unsteady chaotic nations,Restless, perturbed, incapable of standing up,Lending themselves to grotesque maps,

Forming unstable, quivering, permeable boundariesGoverned by ill-defined laws and impotent ombudsmenAnd armies marching past unimpressively,They spring for no good reasonAnd seem destined to be doomed.

The night draws to a close. The rain too appears spent.When day’s first light breaks out,Those nations that would thrive and growAnd glow with innumerable rituals and fast-spreading religionsFeel their bodies disintegratingAnd disappearingUnder the vast spread-out arum fields of the east.

– Fakrul Alam

Carnival Time

It’s carnival time todaySerfs and plebeians pour into streets.Behold the giggling, decked up undertaker’s wife,That man over there, completely soused, is her spouse!He holds his pay tight in his fists and grins grotesquely,See the sweeper there, lips reddened by beetle leaf!There he is – the constable – sporting a shiny wristband.And look at that rotund young eunuch –All merry, like dusky Abyssinians or Afghan revellers in the rain.

Today it’s time to collect wages and bonuses and forget files.Today superiors have traded place with subordinatesAnd mandarins have transformed themselves into mere clerks.

The roly-poly slave and Kishorimohon DasSleep fitfully next to each other near the town reservoir,


Stirred again and again by the Mayor’s snores,The hapless water bearer gets completely wet.

The woman over there is a streetwalker,Visiting town for the first time with her snotty-nosed brother.That man there trades in lead, and there is the perfume seller,He’s the accountant, and he the treasurer,And next to him on this day of intermittent rain is the pettythief ’s no-good brother.And there – leaning, bent by the weight of his imagination, as ifin a trance,Is the poet, the king of poets!

This day all have spilled out into the streets and stroll thereendlessly – intransitiveWrapped in newly spun silk.

– Fakrul Alam

Minar Monsur

Return

Must return to the elapsed memories of my childhoodMust return to the teardrops of the dark and scrawny young galMust return to the regrets of the defiant, yet nervous ladReturning home after a night spent away from home

The bare hut, sheltered by shrubs must still be thereWith an unwearied mom crowned by the lean roofSleepless and aloneThe way God isUpholding routine without regretsWith cataract eyesBreeding loveWith moonlight playing peekaboo all nightWith fireflies singing in the depth of the darkWith the flame of her endless, blind wait by her bedsideMust return to the warm, waiting armsOf an old affectionExceptions disallowedOh men! Oh the striving middle classYou must return, tooNot to a palaceBut to your green pasture and muddy tracksAmidst the haze of the twilights and the blurReturn you must to your home

– Rubana


Riffat Chowdhury

Nameless

Ropita Malati’s in full bloom nowMy verandah easy chair offers my half-awakened eyesThe delight of watching the beautyWhile sipping a cuppa . . .Take me back to that sceneA puff on my verandahA wintry hometown sun hugging meI would like to latch on to my wounded heartLiving my last moments over there

My grassy home is what I pine forMy neighborhood youth is who I want to mingle withAn epitaph etched on the grassy green is what I want to become.

– Rubana

Taslima Nasrin

Simple Talk

As it roamed around, a chromosome named Xfastened itself to another chromosome named X;it could have fastened itself to another chromosome named Y.There’s no fundamental difference between X and Y,just as there is none between A and B, or between Rand S. Neither A nor B is less than the other,the weight or volume of O and P is not less thanthe others’, just as between X and Y

one is not less valuablethan the other.

From XX a person is born, from XY alsoa person is born. Except for a few physical traitsthere are no differences between them. They laugh, cry, eat,sleep. Little by little they grow up

with their human faults and virtues.Neither of them is less significant than the other.

There’s no reason for them to be divided, yet one grouppromptly grabbed for its portion the cushioned chair,the thick mattress on the bed, eighty percent of the property

and the head of the fish.On another plate lay the leftovers and the bones, laythe bottles of cheap alta and scented hair oil.

Between X and Y, there is no relationship of eightyand twenty, high and low, more and less. YetY sits, mounted on the shoulders of X, Y is cheerfullyswinging its legs, whistling and flapping

its arms. At the napeof X’s neck, there’s an ulcer, there are pains


in X’s knee, and cramps at the waist.We all see these disparities before our eyes. But none of usis uttering a word. Our tongues are cut, our lips stitched, ourhands are tied, our feet in shackles.

Shall none of us ever say a word?


Thereafter

My sister used to sing wonderful Tagore songs.She used to love reading Simone de Beauvoir.Forgetting her mid-day bath, she immersed herself in Karl Marx,

Gorky, Tolstoy, and Manik’s novels.

When she wanted to feel nostalgic, Laura Engalls Wilderwas her favourite.

When she saw a play about war, I remember her cryinghalf the night.

My sister used to read wonderful poetryher favourites were Shankha, Niren, Neruda and Yevtushenko.My sister loved the forest, not the garden,she liked sculpture so much she once bought a ticket for Paris.

Now in my sister’s poetry notebookshe keeps meticulous accounts of green vegetables,now she walks around very proudly, loaded with metal ornaments.She says with pride she no longer thinks about politics.Let culture go to hell, she couldn’t care less.Dust collects on her sitar, mice nest in her tanpura.Now she’s a smart shopper, bringing homeporcelain dinnerware, fresh carp, and expensive-looking bedsheets.

– Carolyne Wright

Rezauddin Stalin

The Beginning

My days are split like a cow’s cloven hooves,My moments are cracked like a peasant’s black soles,My birth doesn’t hint at any age,Even the events of my life are not linked to any moments.

When nothing’s afoot in the worldDoes time hang like a question mark?Do I want to identify time only out of a fear of death?

To a paleontologist a thousand years are nothing,To an astronomer a century is of no moment,To a philosopher a hundred million years are a mere instant.

But my time affects me like thirst,Even before an event occurs I identify the moment,And before a journey I’ve always fixed the departure

For a stillborn foetusNo time is earmarked on earth,Its birth is not accompanied by a cry.Crushed by past eventsIsn’t the foetus devoid of all events?

My days are split like a cow’s cloven hoovesMy moments are cracked like a peasant’s black soles,Before my birth there were no special moments,My birth cry is the world’s beginning.

– Hamid Bhuiyan


Sajjad Sharif

Moonstruck

You didn’t heed my warningyou

spread your wingsand took off

and flew around

zigzagging all nightyou

didn’t take me on your backo dark

tall deodar treeyou

heard Yama’s wailin the whistle of the nightwatchman

and

saw with your eyesall the corpses of the past

coming alive

coming from the futureand you

refusing to be a tree again –only

now I want to be born againfrom your roots.

– Syed Manzoorul Islam

Tarik Sujat

I Have Seen Time Walking by on Backward-Pointed Feet

I have seen my time walking byon backward-pointed feet!You didn’t know when the decrepit nationfollowing foot-prints of haunted timereached the brink of an abyss –you just didn’t know.

Oh, my thirty-year-oldbloodstained youth of a homeland,who are dragging you towards the morgue?Every day at the breakfast tablethe sight of your bloodied faceplunges the black print of the newspapersinto profound grief.

And at that timeby the crescent lakein darkness and lighta huge mansion1 floatsin knee-deep water . . .

About that mansion –dreams and hopesof thirteen crore antswere burnt to ashesover and over again.

Predator and prey will one day


join hands and together dip their feetin that soft lake water,while my homeland,balanced on three hundred2 pairs of feetwill advance at a turtle’s pace!

I have seen my time walking byon backward-pointed feet.

Oh my Child! Oh angel,if you are frightened,by the foot-prints of haunted time,spit, spit on this idiot’s chest –the nation will gather courage.

– Shuborna Choudhury

1. A huge mansion : The Assembly Building of Bangladesh, an architecturalmasterpiece constructed on a lake that appears to be floating on it. Thiswonderful structure remained vacant year after year, as there was nodemocratic government while the country suffered martial law.

2 Three hundred pairs of feet: In densely populated Bangladesh, from its130 million people, only 300 members are elected as representatives to theParliament.

Suhita Sultana

Cataleptic Waves Within

Opposing us, hangs addiction.The lethal bite is mingled withsalt and limeBlood shed. Death traps. HatredHaunt the ailing old landscapes

An impatient celebration of lifeEnraged animalsSeparate bed with sharp smell of addictionCataleptic waves within swell

The fourth protagonist was hungry for firesThirsty, defiantly knocking doorsSwallowing salivaTrees die and despairLosses amidst birthsSmell of the deadThe fifth protagonist panics:Pining for dreamsAir, fire, water, foliage, stars and life.

– Rubana


Tushar Gayen

Half a Life

There’s a sunken city in the groundTremors of the fault lines of the columnRock your tableFaraway, yet one more geometric flicker of a cityOf yet another planet closes around youYour fingers are placed diatonicallyCaves breed noisesCraving to be transformed into noble tombsOf the architectural times

Bricks may become wordsWord bricksIf grammar flaps its wingsWill Architecture be able to find its muse?Yet the journey of the two continues.A turbulence torn skyHails raining like bells against the window panesLeaves floating in waterClouds leaving their wet prints on the skyPoetry, a visitor on a sibling’s courtyardWatches the wet, deflected body of the concreteDrenched in showerDesolate in greyVoice trapped in remorseVoiced finally through the tinkling metal

Randomly hatched men in woodsCovered in the grime of the roadWhen confronted by needs and choices

You chose wings to sport the skiesWhile I chose corporate wheelsInadequate for the desired flightTrapped by regretsOf an incomplete craft

– Rubana


Baitullah Quaderee

Stop It

Stop it.Put an end to this passion for clouds,stop the body’s luxurious current,turn your eyetowards trees.Having swallowed up light,the bird passes stool like a long threadwith a sound like music,and this too is the song of the earthdiffused over all maladies.More like the underbelly of a chital-fishthan a slow-moving transport,the wings of a saucer suddenlyslows to a stop in a field;on seeing it people rushand saying it has brought extraterrestrialsputs out their eyes –it seems intelligent creatureswho came with the intention of settling herehave become excitedover a game of changing disguises.Bemoaning is on the rise,the metallic merchant has rolled up his reddish copper eyes,and wonders looking for something in his navelwith the help of a light-bulb.Is it the memory of an undimmed waterfall? A foetus?The disposal of Kamsa? There’s no respite,

coming to the geography of Redhe sees that “geo” isn’t “graphic” at all,“geo” is quite prosaic actually.

– Hamid Bhuiyan


Chanchal Ashraf

India

I had poured light, light.From the depth of the black river, rise and embrace meThe sun comes out of the cloud, for a long whileI was unbefriended.

I tread dust, walking shoeless,leaves and bracken covering my private parts

Since the morning, evening, since the afternoon;Night reluctantly merging into morning

I pour light, light.The moon was absent, for nights were sunken

the chilling smile of the moonbeam maiden.The sun appears at dawn, its crimson face

leads me to the river;Once a crematorium; I’m oblivious of bones,

burnt hair,heaps of ash, grief travelling in the acrid airYou came up, tousled, to clasp me.I drench in light that body of yours

(she is now mute)

I smear light on your bloodstream(she is now turned into stone)

This reminds me;In an orgy of fire, you were tossed into

three parts.

– Nuzhat Amin

Tokon Thakur

Mother

Ma has fallen asleep!And I stand by her headrest

with a clutch of poems;With a raised hood of light, dawn willWipe away the waif-like tale the Night exudesInto featureless ashes will burn all poems.

But tonight, if I remain standing just soin remembrance of Bostami,

Will I get to know – in her thirst what Mahad craved?

Why I was able to bring her only a handful ofpoetry?

True, perhaps I have spent thoughtless daysIn my thirst confusedly holding water and poetry as synonymsLurching towards the second error: of literary successI’m conceding – the lawsuits I madeblaming the newborn for its first mistakes

have not been dropped.In consequence, for my sister, the runaway

her half-sobs, sleepless tears through the nightI have witnessed, many poems burst forth from the

eyeballs.Even if the first condition of birthing poetry is “words.”

ignoring those wordsMa remains silent, because I could not fathom

her thirstCouldn’t read the poetry flowing from her eyes


beaming with tenderness.

Ma is asleep.And I am standing by her headrestWith cloudy hopesAt some point of the night when she awakensHow will I divulge to her the watery meaning

opening my sleepless fist?Though one always wonders, do clouds replicate poetry–

or is the nature of poetry watery?

It’s worth noting, my father has not returned since eveningWalking towards the domestic woods, waving as he walks –

Calling, firefly, O firefly, come back!That fire has taught me if the young run off,

get scorched by the tongue of sunlightThey go beyond evening, the world’s solitary firefly.That’s why, flights of pain germinating in darkness

give me with love gifts of sentencesToday, standing near my mother’s headrest,Watching this sleep, I will again see in the light of

the morning my fistful of poems.becoming featureless ashes.

– Nuzhat Amin

Shamim Reza

A Quickened Night

In watercolours etched a moment’s fragranceStretched over that river’s armDo you remember? That subduednight, the day the mountaincame to bow respectfully, the river by its side . . .Darkness in its fist, a festival of the dead, yetthen was no squall – even in the crackling sunThe motherland was peaceful, the beasts crabby-blind.

You fell asleep during huntingAnd from the graves the bodies of ancestorsStarted levitating in the air, suddenly in whimor plain curiosityYou got lost in the mystery of a different paradiseYou remember – the bed of love in flames

and I had learnt to tame the firecausing some of you to smile . . .

This fire burns in blue water, whereas youwere scorched by lack of faith,did not get the remaining ashes

The wolves have opened their eyes, all aroundthe decimated flocks of birds.And on your visage grewAlien vegetation, saw – the motherland and youbecome alluvial enriched mechanized dolls.

– Nuzhat Amin


Simon Zakaria

What Happened to Three Friends Who HadGone into a Forest

Once we three friends ran awayand sitting in the sun-shadow of the forestlying on the grass for quite a while, surveyed the sky . . .

Then we each lost our own traits . . .

Under a melancholic tree, the musical friend Komolbroke into a blue anguished ragini, Komol’seyes brimmed with tears,Just then in his ragini, a thousand tigresses, the forest.

ıWith them came roaring the tribas in droves.ıThey are approaching

n droves.ııBut by that time Komol’s raginihad reached a crescendo and wasdiminishingıthen it stops at on time . . . the tigressesıalong with the tribls slowly disperse.ıı Lipon, th drama student then pluks fromıthe banks of a slip of a riverıthree klmi flowers . . . flowersıhanging from one

vine stem.ıTh

poet friend was nowhere to be seen . . . after a whileHe was found chirping with the birds in the heart of the forest...but the next moment, we find himconvulsing in agony on the groundas he witnessed, his hands become bird-nestsand he had begun to fly . . . but that

very moment we call out to him –‘Simon’Lo, his wingsdisintegrate and Simon from his flight in the airplunges on to the ground, againbecoming our friend . . .

– Nuzhat Amin


Obayed Akash

The Earth’s Sympathies

Some of it will be submerged in his afternoon repast– will float up the foam of the limitless sea’s sigh.– will flounder in the clouds of the saal forest.– grains will be nibbled by white pigeons.

Sitting hesitantlycounting on the numerals of two handsYou will think of our ancestors

as you bathescrubbing skin with bricks.

White blood oozes,You pluck babla flowersand offer them his afternoon repast.

The bees are droning insistently, todayYou are drawing tattoos on his sadness

Are getting the house painted in whitelime and human fat.

You are falling apart – in the sparse cloudsof the sky –

Are wanting the proximity of the breeze, clotted darkness

Ravaging our Amra garden –shed flowers went to sleep yesterday.

The rains are approaching, its painrecedes far from the darkness of the afternoon.

Some of it was his, was showing fromyour ever virginal state.

You have perspired heavilyThe earth’s sympathies trickling down

like soft beads of sweat.– Nuzhat Amin

Auditi Phalguni

Dream Girl, Come By

Water-gurgle in the breastThe crash of a waterfallThe hushed afternoon rainbow-colouredUntouched by sin,Bungled by your ineptitude, destroyedIn the egotistical vein of a proud master –Now if you were to even collapse in a hundred sighsWhat is that to the exhausted girl?

Now there’s some other afternoon, some other youngstersSwings, horses, dolls, uncountable(Had played with you in the playroomThe doll has been smashed in the devastating storm)Today, it is only for you and me to watch the playShould the days of hide and seek expire!

The footpath is lined with heaps of yellow leaves,The days of fallen leaves are here already?In Munrapara, the snake-charmers call –Insignificant city, my pity for you.Santali songs jitter in the noise of anklets,“Dream girl, come by to me!”Egotistical youth, stay backIn the owl’s lair of well-written dense books –

Touching salt mine and sunflower,I will dance on a leaf mountain!

– Nuzhat Amin


Poems Originally Publishedin English

Farida Majid

Inversion of a Convertbased on verse 2. Aruneyi Upanishad

This choking is no good,it is getting nowhere.

All that eyes have seenand ears have heard,the hissing silk against skinor eating a ripe mangoon a hot Boishakh day,clutter the gullet.

It is long since I struckfire to any hearth.There is not enough fireinside coiled gutsto thaw the rootof this frozen tongue.

My begging bowl has turnedinto a solid lump of lead.My heart is locked shut.My head is in a thousand pieces.

Please, God,do not strangle me to oblivion.Let go my throat.Consider the navel.Yes, let us try to go backto the navel, or better


still, below it, deeperthrough water into the siltfrom where the lotus stems.

Come, let us go for awalk in the woods.

Firoz Ahmed-ud-din

Dhobi Poem

In the morning the washedundergarments smelled of waterin the road-side ditches andthin bamboo poles fixedcrosswise over the whole of the land of India.A sagging jute cord supportedthe monsoon sky, bindingall fears intoa prayer of no more rain.

The indigo applied to the whiteclothes was going thinner in the drizzle.Coins had changed their facesand markings and worth in the local bazaar.Rumblings in the sky and lightninghastened him on thebeating-stone in the dhobi ghat, for ages.Price of indigo was going higher.The milk-goat had died last winter.Kanwali will have to wait anotheryear for her golden bangles.

For centuriescross-leggedthe dhobi sitsthinking of the rising prices ofindigo and lamentingthe death of the sun-god.


Kaiser Haq

Published in the Streets of Dhaka(For Ashis Nandy)

Pretty objects continued to be admired until 1875 when the phrase“pretty-pretty” was coined. That did it. For the truly clever, apt,and skilful, the adjective pretty could only be used in the pejorativesense, as I discovered thirty years ago while being shown aroundKing’s College by E.M. Forster. As we approached the celebratedchapel (magnificent, superb, a bit much), I said, “Pretty.” Forsterthought I meant the chapel when, actually, I was referring to ayouthful couple in the damp middle distance. A ruthless moralist,Forster publicized my use of the dread word. Told in Fitzrovia andpublished in the streets of Dacca [now spelt Dhaka], the daughtersof the Philistines rejoiced; the daughters of the uncircumcisedtriumphed. For a time my mighty shield was vilely cast away.

Gore Vidal, “On Prettiness”, New Statesman, March 17, 1978.

Pretty, isn’t it – sure he’s caught youOn the wrong foot, Mr. Morgan ForsterBroadcasts his priggish amusementOver cigar and port in the King’s SCR.

The story travels swiftly – and why not,It’s suitably droll – to Fitzrovia,Where poets moustached with Bitter frothNibble nuts and gossip in equal measure.

But all the way to monsoon-racked Dhaka?That’s a stretch! I should know,I was born and live here.

Your pretty tale swinging into printUnder the bamboo, the banyan and the mango treeIs the height of absurdity – isn’t that your point?Point taken. Now imagine the dreadOf a writer from Dhaka. Yes, a writer,For Homo Scriptor has a local branch, you know,And at bazaar booksellers’ such thingsAs lyric verse and motley belles lettresPeep out of routine stacks of Exam GuidesLike rusty needles – I too have perpetrated a few.

But your unsolicited publicity may well put paidTo the prospects of any pamphlet or bookPublished in the humble streets of Dhaka.After all, Mr. Gore Vidal,You are almost as famousAs Vidal Sassoon.

Your word may not be lawBut it comes close, in certain quarters –Deservedly. In assailing the iniquitousYou never beat about the bushOr blare like a bully. In my axiological treeYou are up there with Chomsky,Honderich, Arundhati. That makes your snideAside rankle all the more. Now,

What are we to do, Mr. Vidal?Stop writing, and if we do, not publish?Join an immigration queue, hopingTo head for the Diaspora dead-end,Exhibit in alien multicultural museums?

No way. Here I’ll stay, plumb in the centre


Of monsoon-mad Bengal, watchingJackfruit leaves drift earthwardIn the early morning breezeLike a famous predecessor used to

And take note tooOf flashing knives, whirling sticks, bursting bombs,And accompanying gutturals and fricatives of hate,And evil that requires no axisTo turn on, being everywhere –

And should all these find their wayInto my scribbles and into printI’ll cut a joyous caper right hereOn the Tropic of Cancer, proud to bePublished once again in the streets of Dhaka.

Party Games

Other day Bashir Bhai and his goodwife Baby Bhabiare holding party. I am attendingtogether with myself and friends Ustad, Roy and Moody:we are Gang of Four, I am thinking.Our own goodwives are with respective families,therefore we are temporary bachelor.The guests are coming little by little,everybody respectable and highly occupied:Government service, NGO, business, industry.Some are notorious alsobut I will not backsidebite.A few foreigners and non resident localsmake evening most cosmopolitan.At first we are friendly but stiff,

then host is pouring drinks.We get tight,loosen up,let it all hang out,everybody talking altogetherabout everything under sun (and moon also):‘Greenhouse effect is coming.’‘Economy is deteriorating.’‘But Government is taking steps.’‘Yes, in wrong direction.’‘Housing problem, servant problem, marriage problem.’‘Palestine, Somalia, Bosnia.’‘Poor Mr. Boutros Ghalli, always lookinglike he is shitting bricks.’‘Problem problem everywhereıso let’s have anothr drop to drink.’ ıAll the time the fur of us buddiesıare using both eyes tosteal glances – ısome slim, some not so slm,ıbut very nice on the whole.ıThen suddenlyeverybody’s eyesıare filing up with newcomer:ıshe i just like Mae West in saree.ı In my mindI am calling her Mae East.ıShe s too good. But her husbandis looking daggers right and left.This is not liberal attitude.After all, what is life?Bag of air with holes in it.In short, nothingwithout mercy pity piss up and lust.With this final message I am ready to departtogether with myself and buddies.


Then suddenly somebody is enteringmagnetic field of Mae Eastand losing control of his fingers.Mr Mae East shouts, ‘Piss off!’Then bottles and glasses are running through airAnd quickly our gang is down on all foursgalloping to exit.

Biographical Notes

The Poets

Farrukh Ahmed (1918-1974) earned his poetic spurs in pre-Partition Kolkata. A socialist in his youth, he later identifiedhimself with the Islamic ideology of Pakistan. But this did notprevent him from supporting the Language Movement of 1952or the Bangladesh war of independence. Besides poetry, he wroteplays and juvenilia and received several national awards both beforeand after the birth of Bangladesh.

Syed Ali Ahsan (1920-2002) was a poet and man of letters whofollowed up a distinguished academic career with a spell as amember of the national cabinet. An enthusiastic supporter of thePakistan movement, he later joined the independence struggle of1971. He was associated with numerous literary and culturalorganizations, including P.E.N. and the “Congress for CulturalFreedom.”

Obayed Akash (1973- ) is literary editor of a national daily inDhaka.


Omar Ali (1938- ) is a college professor and has been a prolificpoet with a penchant for using demotic language.

Jahanara Arzoo (1932- ) has had a distinguished career as anovelist, short story writer and poet. She has also co-edited animportant women’s magazine.

Zarina Akhtar (1951- ) teaches Bangla at Lalmatia College inDhaka and publishes poetry regularly.

Chanchal Ashraf (1969) is a journalist.

Abid Azad (1952-2005) was recognized as one of the moreinteresting poets to emerge in the 1970s. He has left behind animpressive quantity of verse (14 collections) and fiction.

Alauddin Al-Azad (1932- ) has had a distinguished career as aprofessor of Bangla and a diplomat. He has been prolific in allthe literary genres and has been honoured with numerous awards,including the Bangla Academy Award and the “Ekushey Padak.”

Humayun Azad (1947-2006) taught Bangla and Linguistics atDhaka and was equally distinguished as a poet, a scholar and anovelist. In February 2006, he was attacked and grievously injuredby a gang of Islamic fundamentalists incensed by a satirical novelhe had written about them. Though he survived, he never fullyrecovered his strength and died of a cardiac arrest while on aFellowship in Germany.

Rafiq Azad (1943- ) has worked as a journalist, a Bangla Academyofficial and administrator of a “Tribal Cultural Academy” whilesinglemindedly pursuing his poetic career. He was one of theleading lights of the so-called “Sad Generation” of writers, whomade their debut in the 1960s.

Shamim Azad (1952- ) was a vibrant media personality in

Bangladesh before she got married and emigrated to the UK,where she teaches in a school and gives performances as astoryteller. She has several collections of poetry to her credit.

Shahera Khatun Bela (1956- ) is an anesthesiologist who haspublished several collections of poetry.

Belal Chowdhury (1938- ) is a poet and a man of letters whohas been active in the literary worlds of both Kolkata (in thesixties and early seventies) and Dhaka. He was editor of Krittibas(Kolkata) for some time, and for some years of Bharat Bichitra,published by the Indian High Commission, Dhaka.

Asad Choudhury (1943- ) is both a poet and a media personality.He has also published critical essays, books for children andtranslations, and has been honoured with several prestigious literaryawards.

Khaleda Edib Chowdhury (1939-2008) took degrees in Banglabefore entering government service. Her poetry, which is alive toFeminist and social themes, has been collected in four volumes.

Riffat Chowdhury (1960-) is an amateur actor and poet.

Tridib Dastidar (1952-2004) was recognized as a powerful anddisturbing new voice in Bangladeshi poetry well before hisuntimely death.

Tushar Gayen (1967) works for an NGO in Dhaka.

Nirmalendu Goon (1945- ) is one of the most prolific andpopular poets of Bangladesh, thanks to his easily accessible,forthright style and use of comic elements. He has received anumber of awards, including the Bangla Academy Award forpoetry.


Ahsan Habib (1917-85) was a widely admired poet, one of thefirst generation of modernists in Bangladesh, and an influentialjournalist and literary editor.

Abul Hasan (1947-75) was one of the best loved poets of hisgeneration. In his all too brief life he published four well-receivedcollections. The Bangla Academy Award was given to himposthumously.

Dilara Hafiz (1955- ) received her B.A. Honours, M.A. andPh.D. degrees in Bangla literature, which she teaches in agovernment college. She is married to the poet Rafiq Azad.

Hasan Hafiz (1955- ) is a journalist.

Dilara Hashem (1947- ) has long been on the staff of the VOA’sBangla Service. Besides poetry she has published over 30 novelsas well as film scripts.

Abdul Ghani Hazari (1925-76) was a highly respected andpopular poet, translator and essayist. For most of his professionallife he was a journalist. He is perhaps the best known satiristamong Bangladeshi poets. Among the honours he received wasthe UNESCO Prize for poetry.

Khondakar Ashraf Hossain (1950- ) is professor and chairmanof the Department of English at Dhaka University. He has beena prolific poet since the seventies, and he edits an influential littlemagazine, Ekobingsho (“The Twenty-First”).

Muhammad Nurul Huda (1949- ) is a poet, critic and translatorwho worked as Director at the Bangla Academy and as DirectorGeneral of the Nazrul Academy.

Rabiul Husain (1943- ) is an architect and art critic besides beinga poet. He was associated with the Dadaist group that brought

out a magazine called “Na.”

Abul Hossain (1922- ) worked as a bureaucrat while quietlypursuing a literary life. One of the first generation of modernistsin Bangladeshi poetry, he has been influential on youngercontemporaries.

Kaisul Huq (1933- ) is a veteran poet, distinguished by a soberphilosophic tone.

Syed Shamsul Huq (1935- ) is among the best knownBangladeshi writers, equally prolific in poetry, fiction and drama.He has also published several well-received translations ofShakespeare and other dramatists.

Zahidul Huq (1949- ) works as a journalist. For some time hewas on the staff of Deutsche Welle’s Bangla Service, whichbroadcasts from Cologne.ıDaud

yder (1952- ) was forced into exile in the seventies when a poem o his provoked Muslim clerics to demand his punishment for blaphemy. He has since made India and then Germany his home,and has continued to be productive.

Zia Hyder (1936-2008) taught Bangla and Drama at ChittagongUniversity and was active as a writer as well as a Theatre personality.He was Founder-President of Nagorik, a leading drama group inthe country. He was influential as a poet, dramatist, critic andtranslator.

Sikander Abu Jafar (1919-1975) was a versatile writer and literaryeditor. Shamakal, a magazine that he edited from the fiftiesonwards, was the most significant forum for poetic modernismin the country. Besides poetry, he published fiction, drama,juvenile literature and wrote lyrics.


Mahmud Kamal (1957- ) teaches Bangla in a college in Tangaildistrict.

Sufia Kamal (1911-99) was influential as a social activist inspiredby Feminism, besides being a prolific and popular poet. She editeda popular women’s magazine for some time.

Abu Karim (1953- ) is a bureaucrat with a passion for poetry.

Masud Khan (1959- ) works in telecommunications.

Farida Majid teaches English at a university in New York. In theseventies she was a dynamic presence on the London poetry scene,running the Salamander Imprint, which published a number ofbooks of distinction. She writes poetry in English as well asBengali, besides essays on cultural themes.

Al Mahmud (1936- ) has long been recognized as a major poet.His voluminous work, both as a poet and a fiction writer, ischaracterized by a blend of modernism with an intense interestin the traditional life of rural Bengal. In his political sympathieshe started at the Centre, veered to the Left and then swung roundto the Right; this no doubt distinguishes him from hisdemocratically minded contemporaries.

Hayat Mamud (1939- ) taught Bangla at JahangirnagarUniversity, on the outskirts of Dhaka, and distinguished himselfas a scholar and critic while steadily publishing well crafted poems.

Minar Mansur (1960- ) works for an NGO.

Mohammad Moniruzzaman (1936-2008) had a distinguishedcareer as a Professor of Bangla at Dhaka University. He authorednumerous scholarly and critical works and was much admired asa poet and lyricist.

Taslima Nasrin (1962- ) is no doubt the Bangladeshi writer best

known internationally, since the notorious fatwa by Islamicfundamentalists forced her into exile. She is a vigorous polemicistinspired by Radical Feminism as well as a novelist, short storywriter and poet. Hearteningly, her years of exile in the West andin India have not dulled her pen, though the loss of an intimateconnection with her reading public in Bangladesh has hadunavoidable effects.

Abu Zafar Obaidullah (1934-2001) was a highly placed civilservant who worked both for the Bangladesh government andinternational organizations. He maintained a lifelong interest inliterature and wrote some of the best known poems incontemporary Bangladeshi literature.

Auditi Phalguni (1974- ) is a celebrated fiction writer, butpublishes poetry occasionally.

Baitullah Quaderee (1968- ) teaches Bangla at Dhaka Universityand has drawn attention as a Postmodernist poet.

Shaheed Quaderi (1942- ) is a distinctive voice among the majorBangladeshi poets. Though he has published only three collectionsand has been self-exiled for over a quarter century, his poeticstature remains unassailable. He lives in New York with his wife.For some years now, since a sudden kidney failure, he has beenon regular dialysis. His unpublished and uncollected poemsshould make up another substantial volume.

Sajjad Quadir (1947- ) has worked in journalism and television.He was one of the promising new poets of the seventies.

Mohammad Rafiq (1943- ) is Professor of English atJahangirnagar University. He was one of the stalwarts of the “SadGeneration” of the sixties, and has since continued to publishpoetry that is rich in social criticism and also emotionally charged.


Hasan Hafizur Rahman (1932-85) taught Bangla in variouscolleges while pursuing a highly fruitful career as a poet, essayist,translator and short story writer. He also worked as a journalist.He received several national awards and edited the mostcomprehensive multi-volume history of the Bangladesh war ofindependence.

Ruby Rahman (1946- ) took degrees in English from DhakaUniversity and trained as a teacher. She has worked both as ateacher and a journalist, but has always been best known as apoet.

Shamsur Rahman (1929-2006) is generally acknowledged tobe the greatest Bangladeshi poet of modern times. He worked asa radio and a print journalist, retiring as editor of a national daily.He published over seventy volumes of verse, besides a number ofprose works and was showered with honours both at home andabroad. In 2001, he became the first recipient of the SAARCLiterary Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Shamim Reza (1971- ) teaches Bangla at Dhaka GoernmentCollege and has been publishing poetry regularly since the nineties.

Kashinath Roy (1947- ) worked for the Bangla Academy beforejoining the English faculty of Dhaka University, where he is aprofessor. He began publishing poetry in the 1960s, but it isonly recently that he has begun collecting his work.

Mahadev Saha (1944- ) is a poet and a journalist who firstattracted attention in the late sixties. Saha has since publishedcopiously, including a hefty volume of complete poems.

Farida Sarkar (1957-2005) worked as a journalist, governmentadministrator and university teacher while publishing poetry. Shetook degrees in English from Dhaka University and a Ph.D. from

SUNY, Stony Book. She died of cancer.

Shihab Sarkar (1952- ) took degrees in English from DhakaUniversity before embarking on a career in journalism. He wasone of the poets who made their debut in the seventies. He hasattended the International Writers Programme at the Universityof Iowa.

Hayat Saif (1942- ) worked as a civil servant, retiring as chief ofthe Customs department. He has published several collectionsof poetry. At present he is Executive Editor of ICE Todaymagazine.

Selim Sarwar (1947- ) took degrees in English from DhakaUniversity and a Ph.D. from McGill. He has taught at DhakaUniveresity and the University of Taif in Saudi Arabia, and iscurrently chairman of the English department at North SouthUniversity in Dhaka. He was recognized as a promising new voiceof the sixties, but it is only recently that he has collected hiswork.

Fazal Shahabuddin (1936- ) is a veteran poet who has also beena magazine publisher. Among the awards he has received is theBangla Academy Award for poetry, which he shared with ShaheedQuaderi.

Rudro Mohammad Shahidullah (1956-1991) won a largenumber of admirers in course of his brief poetic career, and is stillwarmly remembered. He was married to the Feminist writerTaslima Nasrin.

Sajjad Sharif (1963- ) is literary editor of Prothom Alo, the largestselling national daily in Bangladesh. He has recently publishedhis debut poetry collection.

Abu Hasan Shahriar (1959- ) is a journalist.


Tarik Sujat (1965- ) is a businessman who takes poetry seriously.

Nasima Sultana (1957-97) was born to parents who hademigrated from West Bengal at the time of the Partition. Shestudied Bangla at Dhaka university and took up journalism. Beforeher premature death, from cancer, she had published twocollections of verse.

Suhita Sultana (1965- ) works for the Jatiya Grantha Kendra(National Book Centre), an organization for promoting bookpublishing.

Rezauddin Stalin (1962- ) is an administrator at the NazrulAcademy.

Abdul Mannan Syed (1943- ) was one of the prominemtmembers of the “Sad Generation”. He has taught Bangla in variouscolleges and served as Director General of the Nazrul Academy.He is prolific both as a poet and as a critic.

Tokon Thakur (1969- ) is a film-maker.

Simon Zakaria (1972- ) works in the media. Besides writingpoetry he is an anthropological researcher currently engaged inmaking a comprehensive study of the country’s folk culture.

The Translators

Farhad Ahmed is a freelance journalist and translator.

Fakrul Alam is Professor of English at Dhaka University and isequally well known as a scholar-critic and a translator.

Sonia Amin is Professor of History at Dhaka University and iswidely admired as a scholar and translator.

Tapan Jyoti Barua is Professor of English at ChittagongUniversity. He translates from Bangla to English and vice versa.

Quazi Mostain Billah is Professor of English and Dean of theFaculty of Arts at Chittagong University. He is a short story writer,essayist and translator.

Hamid Bhuiyan is a retired school teacher and a freelance writerand translator.

Shuborna Choudhury studied English at Dhaka University andthen joined the Civil Service. She is an accomplished singer andtranslator.

Kabir Chowdhury (1920- ) is one of the National Professors ofBangladesh, and the country’s most prolific translator – fromEnglish to Bengali and vice versa.

Kaiser Haq: see below under “The Editor”.

Mohammad Nurul Huda (1949- ) is a poet, critic and translatorwho worked as Director at the Bangla Academy and as DirectorGeneral of the Nazrul Academy.

Khademul Islam is a fiction writer and translator, and the literaryeditor of The Daily Star.

Syed Manzoorul Islam (1951- ) is Professor of English at Dhaka


University, and one of the most versatile men of letters inBangladesh. He has published fiction and literary and art criticism,and is a popular columnist and media personality. His fiction haswon several prestigious awards.

Ayesha Mustafa Kabir was born in London to a Bengali fatherand an English mother and studied English literature at DhakaUniversity. Besides translating from Bengali to English (and viceversa), she has also worked as a schoolteacher and in NGOs.

A. B. M. Masud Mahmood is Professor of English at ChittagongUniversity. He is both a critic and a translator.

M. Harunur Rashid has taught at the Universities of Chittagongand Jahangirnagar and headed the Bangla Academy as DirectorGeneral. He is currently on the English faculty of North SouthUniversity, and is compiling an English-Bengali dictionary. Hispublications include two collections of translated poetry.

Carolyne Wright was educated at the Universities of Seattle andSyracuse, where she took a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing.A Senior Fulbright Grant enabled her to work on translatingwomen poets in both Bengals. The outcome of the project is aseries of books. Herself an accomplished poet, she has publishedeight collections of her own poetry and has won several prestigiousawards. She teaches creative writing in Seattle and is associatedwith the magazine Artful Dodge.

The Editor

Kaiser Haq is Professor of English at Dhaka University. He is apoet with six collections to his credit, most recently Published inthe Streets of Dhaka: Collected Poems 1967-2007 (Dhaka:writers.ink). He has translated the Selected Poems of ShamsurRahman, Tagore’s novel Chaturanga (as Quartet) for the PenguinTagore Omnibus I; and an 18th century travelogue, The Wondersof Vilayet (Delhi: Chroniclebooks). His translation of NasreenJahan’s novel Urukkoo is forthcoming from Penguin India. Hehas been a Commonwealth Scholar, a Senior Fulbright Scholar,a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and a resident poet at the PoetryCafé, London.


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