Figures Of Speech
if only because running water lends itself to profound observations
e.g. Heraclitus's aphorism about the impossibility
of stepping into the same river twice
which I revise in the light of Lord Buddha's wisdom, viz.
it isn't quite the same person who steps in the second time
& suddenly for no rhyme or reason remembering
Rimbaud's mysterious self-definition
Je est un autre
see
clear as the dear cool water
a small boy thrill to the liquid touch
as it laves around skinny shanks
& leaves mica glitters on dark skin
while a slippery susu in the distance
punctuates the rippling syllables--a kinetic comma!--
& small fishing boats fill up with a rainbow-bright catch.
Now cut to the present: peer into the constricted river's
polluted mirror,
watch your haunted eyes tremble:
no flash of fin excites the shallows,
the water's unfit to drink,
unfit to swim in,
unfit to touch--
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Looking over this depressing draft for a poem
only the images seem to have any life,
similes and metaphors as sharp and clear
as the river is murky--
that's another one;
well, as doom
looms--nice sound effect there
eh? Anyway--
as doom
looms--
you might of course interject
that it always does--
still, right now
as our very own
doom
looms
is that all we have
to fall back on--
figures of speech?
Kaiser Huq teaches English at Dhaka University.
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