The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sacred perception

Shamsur Rahman

Sometimes my poem from far and near keeps close company with me.

As if I take bath of its cold water that washes away all dirt

of my mental weariness and in me

a blue lotus blooms.

How would I be able to take away this rebirth

through the sun and rain or fire safely?

Today at midnight when stars have gone on exile

like those leftist political workers,

when the autocrats make blue prints of conspiracy

or sleep snoring,

then I make up my mind about my poetry.

So long I struggled for that perception time and again,

I did not hesitate at all

to put that theme wafted away

in the dark current of floodwater.

My poem will not portray any form

that would scare my readers

and the shock of which would not push

those poet-fame earners

or for its intricacy of interpretation

the thick-headed critics wouldn't continue itching their heads

and make the sore to bring out the meaning of it

and substantiate by heart a medley thesis

of various odd things

what they themselves would not understand anyway.

Never the language of my poem

would speak of the feigning words

of advertisement,

no such words of my poem would be there

while working out their meanings

the voluminous dictionary has to be

brought down from the shelf again and again.

The language of my poem will ring out the rhymes

of day-to-day life. My poem is against

the obscene hip and buttock dance of the film heroine

or the veiled woman's ugly dance

or veiled woman's irrelevant movement,

rather my poem is like the portrayal of

Quamrul Hasan's graceful slim girl

pedaling wooden fulcrum rod (Dhenky)

for husking rice, and drawing bucketful of water by rope

with her strong hands

from the deep well at mid-summer

and chilly nerve-racking winter morning.

My poem, I proclaim, is not at all eager

to sit at the flower-decked dinner table

of the autocrat ruler,

corrupt minister, frustrated politician,

black-marketers and smugglers,

rather it will share parched-rice .

with molasses at the hut of the poor family.

Mind it, my poem will not be scared and stay away

at the gunpoint or club of the police.

My poem is not the clown

with talcum powder-pasted neck and face

or the pure pink attitudinarian full-beau

charmed by the songs of the robins,

rather my poem is the rope-puller boatmen

of Jainul Abedin for whose bent down back

have been adorned with the pearl-sweats

by the color of the setting sun.

My poem is the dazzling boat of Noah

at the crest of people's sudden seizure of state power,

my poem walks along the Bolivian Jungle

with the sign of oozing out blood of Che Guevara

raising the head aloft and destroys

those despots who undo the cause of democracy

at their sweet will

like monkey-dance

and my poem kicks out the football

of the overwhelming sufferings.

My poem writes the biography in the words of liberation

like Nazim Hikmat at the darkest chamber of the prison cell.

My poem hovers over the unfaithful darkness

like the eagle and strikes with sharp nails and beak

pecking it sharply again and again,

and spurts out the light

whereas that fall of the shining light makes the thing sacred.

(Translated by M. Mizanur Rahman)