Before the Last Breath

After so many years, more than a decade or so, when you pass my home,

don't forget to take a look at the humble roof of haystack and wattle

if not the humble me waiting to have a look at your eyes for an epoch.

You must remember how I ran short of words in worshipping your eyes,

those two eyes that can calm down a fighting bull with a single look.

I'd ask you to sit before me for hours without taking your look away

so I could see you and your eyes being oblivious of the whole world.

Forgive me I'm talking only of your eyes but you're more than my self.

A sky within my heartland still counts days and months on your arrival.

Now the world has come to a standstill but I want everything to move.

Only to have a look at those eyes and see you once more I still breathe.

I know I won't be able to walk up to the country road you'll travel along

but a tiny wooden window with two old crumbled planks on two sides

help me see grasshoppers playing in the orchard and a few wayfarers

as I keep looking through the window every day, the only act I can do.

Nowadays my eyes betray me because I can't see properly anymore.

Grasses in the field seem to be turning yellow, grasshoppers skinnier

but all the coconut and betel-nut trees and their leaves around my hut

know how I keep looking at the country road with my unblinking eyes.

The road bordered by trees takes a different look just before the evening

when the sun bends in the western horizon and small wind stirs leaves.

Keeping awake for months and years and sitting by the creaky window,

I search my soul I lost ages ago when the world encountered a storm.

I'll wait until the second apocalypse, I'll wait even if I'm utterly blind.

Now the source of my living are memories of the time we spent together

looking at each other talking of silence amidst a play of light and shadow

and if in the world of melancholy a ray of hope still sojourns at my door,

it's a second dream in which you pass the country road before evening

when you steal a glance to exchange the last look with the dying soul

sitting by the window, straining his eyes and wheezing for the last breath.

Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, poet, translator, and academic, is a professor of English at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh; Email: msijewel@gmail.com