My Absence

In the sultry air of March yawns my absence.

Who knew even the year's last Sunday would pass in such alienation?

Still I do not come back: flowers from your bun wither and fall off on your back. 

Taking away the tea-making paraphernalia, you think whether 

you should change the saree and keep lying in the southern room downstairs.

And I have put on the attire of promise-breakers

as if I forgot everything, as if I never promised to anybody,

'I'm coming back. Stay indoors. We two will sit together on the veranda.'

A blurred memory still haunts my mind:

a woman sometimes used to wear a saree as I liked her to;

she used to become a river, laughing, 

because I love rivers;

when I tried to make her understand the enigmas of nature,

and when I said, 'If you were a tree –,'

hearing this, she, all at once, used to say,

'Look!', spreading out all her branches.

Today I have put on the attire of promise-breakers,

and my absence yawns in the sultry air of March.

Md. Elias Uddin is a Lecturer in the Department of  English at Dhaka University.