(Translated by Md Mehedi Hasan)

My mother often tells me—

What would these poems

bring?

Rather get a job.

How long will you be like this!

Besides, we're getting old—

someday you'll have to

take care of the family.

I brood in silence

like the leaf that comes flying

from the yellow forest—

I know, all my poems

cannot buy

a day's worth of my mother's medicine!

I know.

Hasan Robayet is a Bangladeshi poet.

Md Mehedi Hasan is a lecturer of English at North Western University, Khulna. He occasionally contributes to Star Literature.