Poem
Flower Girl (For Dazuke Shiraishi)
One afternoon in the Red-bird farm
outside Iowa city, you said
you found a rare flower, seldom
seen by men, flowers
only in spring.
One afternoon
looking at your eyes I believed
what you said. In the fall
of Midwest, golden and green painted the trees
the sky was cleaner blue
as your eyes and bronze
coloured memories floated
down the season of falling leaves. We sat near each other
and we talked...you took
a swim in the pond
in the Red-bird farm.
I walked the woods-getting-dark. As we lay together on the grass
you started calling me
'little brother'. We discussed
life's problems and a few solutions,
laughingly we buried the world
into a bowl of soup
you prepared for dinner
in your apartment. I made posters
for your poetry
reading and performance
in the city. You showed me your picture
in red hair...you had dyed it back
to its natural colour. I tell you
I have a dark-headed sister
at home. You showed me your
daughter's picture. I told you about
my family. We exchanged poems. One winter morning
as it was snowing outside the Imperial Palace
out walking in the Ginza
downtown Tokyo I discovered a flower
seldom seen by strangers, flowers
only in the hardest of seasons
where
human loneliness rides the empty buses
on fast motorcycles with steel helmets
and dark glasses, zooms
down its way to time and age and decay.
The flower
of friendship. Flowers once.
Never withers. Feroz Ahmed-ud-din lives in Dhaka. An ex-student of English at Dhaka University, he won prizes for his poetry during the '70s. The above is a previously unpublished poem which won the All Nations' Poetry Prize in Triton College, Illinois, in 1977.
outside Iowa city, you said
you found a rare flower, seldom
seen by men, flowers
only in spring.
One afternoon
looking at your eyes I believed
what you said. In the fall
of Midwest, golden and green painted the trees
the sky was cleaner blue
as your eyes and bronze
coloured memories floated
down the season of falling leaves. We sat near each other
and we talked...you took
a swim in the pond
in the Red-bird farm.
I walked the woods-getting-dark. As we lay together on the grass
you started calling me
'little brother'. We discussed
life's problems and a few solutions,
laughingly we buried the world
into a bowl of soup
you prepared for dinner
in your apartment. I made posters
for your poetry
reading and performance
in the city. You showed me your picture
in red hair...you had dyed it back
to its natural colour. I tell you
I have a dark-headed sister
at home. You showed me your
daughter's picture. I told you about
my family. We exchanged poems. One winter morning
as it was snowing outside the Imperial Palace
out walking in the Ginza
downtown Tokyo I discovered a flower
seldom seen by strangers, flowers
only in the hardest of seasons
where
human loneliness rides the empty buses
on fast motorcycles with steel helmets
and dark glasses, zooms
down its way to time and age and decay.
The flower
of friendship. Flowers once.
Never withers. Feroz Ahmed-ud-din lives in Dhaka. An ex-student of English at Dhaka University, he won prizes for his poetry during the '70s. The above is a previously unpublished poem which won the All Nations' Poetry Prize in Triton College, Illinois, in 1977.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments