Two Poems by Ruby Rahman
artwork by amina
A Patched-Up Poem
You must have realized by nowThat this poem, like life, is all patched-up.
Two lines were written in the month of Agrahayon
Over which swept innumerable Sidrs, so many springs.
Haggling over fish
I jotted down two more lines on a taka note.
Then came inflation, came famine,
Who knows where flew away that taka note
Flew away this surreal life
Flew away all those open dreams. That night amid a gentle earthquake
When trembled this new century
The trees flew up to somehow go and sit
Beside the stars in the sky,
Clouds rushed in at comet-speed to fill my rice plate,
And I was flung to land in Palashi's battlefield.
From the earth's depths out flowed boiling lava
My little finger and forefinger jerked
As my tears and blood burnt to vapour.
My Srabon nights misted, they fled away
Fled the blue deep-dark clouds, dried the ceaseless rain.
Yet, even then,
Astonishingly blue-and-green alphabets crowded me
To sew these lovely patches like a quilt
On the body of my poem. Only to again disappear. What desolation!
On fields open spaces in offices rush working people
Aging faster than sound, faster than light. In this tumult
Two stanzas of this poem enter into a black
hole
But every moment send distress signals
Blip-blip from the center of dreams, from the depths
of a re-awakening
As if a star was emerging from within Srabon-darkness!
In this poem like desolate life where do I fit in the lines! Oh, this patch-work, this tailorwork I can no longer abide.
Quarreling
The quarrelling's been going on, you couldn't stay homeThe price of onions too high so you didn't buy them
Flowers bloom in the grass at Curzon Hall
(Rabindranath, I'm in debt to you...). It's February, yes, I know,
Seminars, the book fair, final proofs—I know you forgot it all
Donned that ancient yellow punjabi and stalked out—
I know, Bazlu bhai's on his last journey at the Shahid Minar
And flowers bloom in glens. Yet insidiously I carry on the quarrel
Though life's two-score years have long since gone by—
Well, all right, we shall meet the year round at the bookfair
And flowers will bloom as Falgun falls
And maybe in a second life I'll get some peace and quiet. Clad in that yellow punjabi out you stormed
The day went in bickering, love sprouted among the flowers
On this squabbling-cum-moonlit spring night I saw in a dream
You placed a tiara on my head—oh the
Agony the vision brought— the torment
You searched and couldn't find your heart
So you placed on high your anguish,
In pain I staggered and understood
This was not gold, but a drop of ambrosia.
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