The first time I saw Shamsur Rahman must have been on TV: televised poetry readings were a lot commoner in the sixties than today. The first time I actually met him was certainly in the late sixties at the Gopibagh flat shared by the poet Shaheed Quaderi and his elder brother. But it wasn't till after Bangladesh became independent that we had an exchange that might be called a conversation. Soft-spoken and hesitant of speech though he had always been, his interest was roused when he heard that I had volunteered for our Liberation Army; with childlike curiosity he wanted to hear about my war experiences. Our acquaintance deepened as my modest literary activities touched his. I recall a memorable morning when he gave generously of his time to respond to a battery of questions that my colleague Dr Shawkat Husain and I had drawn up. Some of the questions were designed to tease him a little (e.g. Would you agree that you've become something like our poet laureate?) and he rose to the bait. For some reason the interview was never published and has disappeared down the chute of time. Not long afterwards I began translating Shamsur Rahman's poetry, and eventually published a book,Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman(BRAC, 1985). The enterprise seemed to give our relationship a definitive shape; some of the people I met in literary circles came to know me as Shamsur Rahman's translator...well, as one of his translators. And now, as I try to give expression to the sense of loss that so many of us now share I feel that instead of doing so directly I should rather pay him my respects by trying to translate another poem or two.CANINE NEWS
Shamsur Rahman
Competition between dogs and men
Having lately grown inordinately fierce,
Some of us bark a good deal
More than stray dogs, charge
With snapping jaws, make a mess
About the house. When it comes
To tail-wagging and boot-licking
Dogs lag way behind...put to shame
They stop halfway and strike
Up a hymn in praise of mankind.
Dogs are famed in all creation
For devotion to the master:
To save his life they'd sacrifice
Their own without batting an eyelid.
But men are servile only as long
As the master is powerful and strong,
Eagerly lending a hand to stash away
Gold and whatnot; but when the master's
Neck is severed, the dead
Body quietly abandoned,
They sneak out the back door.
(Translated from the Bengali 'Sharomeyo Shamachar')
THE REPLY
Shamsur Rahman
O loveliest of women, you
Can of course gaze at the azure
And blithely declare,
'This sky is mine.'
But the sky will not reply.
At dusk you may hold
A camellia in your hand
And say,
'Flower, you're mine.'
Yet the flower will remain silent,
Wrapped up in its own scent.
When moonlight rushes into your room
You've every right to say,
'This is my moonlight.'
But the moon will say nothing.
If however you should look into my eyes
And say, 'You're mine alone,'
How can I keep quiet?
I'll spread the word
Throughout the universe,
'I'm yours, you're mine.'
(Translated from the Bengali 'Uttar')
Kaiser Haq is Professor of English at Dhaka University. Pathak Shamabesh will shortly reissue his 'Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman' in an enlarged edition.
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