Poetry
Serendipity
Wake me up every morning as dawn becomes a new day.
WB Yeats’s ‘Easter, 1916’ and Bangladesh’s July 1-36, 2024
What motivated our youth to defy death in order to free Bangladesh from the yoke of a brutal regime?
POETRY / October: An unfinished poem
Glamorous lightweight raindrops from the October sky keep
POETRY / Silence
A star fell on the ground in the windy night
POETRY / Republic of the dead
As if playing a game of chess / Still the world waits for the next dawn
POETRY / Sinking in ink
Don’t you see— I can only write dark.
POETRY / Devi
The first pulse, in the midst of a whipping maelstrom,
POETRY / The wheel of change
Eternity collapses at the wheel of change. / Past is lost
POETRY / Fall
August, marked with dying things. Summer’s end, / My freedom spent
Birth of a poem
Hark! / Busy work of Hands
Valley of blood
teardrops trickling down / the valley / mingling with the static— / hollow waves of Kaptai lake
My heart's longevity comes from my maa's magnifying kindness
Maa, you are an endless exhibition / of sweet-sour happiness
Stories of passing strangers
My train just started / I found my seat / When she called me
Humanity at risk
Was it a spectacle—filmed the whole incident? / Why didn’t you withstand? / Why didn’t you try to desist?
Hazardous miasma
The night smoke carries out the riots of innocents,
The creek drank the sorrows you sang to
Rose-tinted glasses are just red, and I have painted myself with the color now that the hollow of your eyes isn’t there, now that
Silent friday
Somehow, the taste of tear gas
Survival tactics for “peaceful” protests
Stay in a group, never in alleyways
Swapane eshechilo mridubhashini
Translated by Mohammad Shafiqul Islam