Ekushey

Barefoot processions and streams of people
on Dhaka's streets;
As if a flashflood has swept all these youths here.
Girls with flowing hair and white saris--
the young men
in their fine shirts, sleeves rolled up.
A black badge pinned to the left shoulder,
faces sweating
from a ritual fire.

From a flower-bedecked dais the poet shouts
his fiery words,
the revolutionary rhythm of words, phrases
and songs
which, like un-reined horses of the sun, tear
through the air
filling the sky with echoes of drumming hooves
a thousand hands raised in hope to make possible
the impossible.
The sun's galleon drops its oars in the eastern sky.

Barely two miles from Dhaka to the south lies
Bailapur;
and Jamir: predictably unclad bare feet
and empty-stomached--
couldn't even afford a few leftover morsels
from last night's 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 from
forefathers,
would at last speak
lashed 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 lips
displaying in its ebb and flow
a varied conflict of countless waves.
Geographic landmarks are etched on the history
of the land and time.
Birth on the gift of a moment, death of a
particular day,
The neck waits under a raised blade, as language
finds similes under a guillotine,
and courage and the integrity of words; and
an honest trade in return.
But in your effort to dig out a grave
and hide Jamir's remains in it, you have
forgotten the Twenty-First.

But tell me: has the day forgotten you?

Mohammad Rafiq is one of Bangladesh's leading poets. Syed Manzurul Islam teaches English at Dhaka University.