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
Lamp of grief
Nothing is meaningless if speech and silence fill void, flowing in the same force, and no one blocks the road to dreaming.
My van my grief
I tried to be renamed in the middle But my van and I have never been apart!
Cosmopolitan Dream
I see you, with whatever half awake, sleep drifting irises, I see you. Dusted in the shelves of unread books, I see you and I know you, They will never know you but I do, in ways you are afraid.
for my weeping mother
her heart was a two seater unfit for a family so big i grew to be a woman mirrored in her shadow when she was younger
Cog against the machine
you spend what you make to make what you spend, and you do it today to do it all over again
Shamim Reza creates new frontiers with his new poetry collection
Over the last 30 years, he has received multiple national and international literary awards for his work. He is, currently, the vice-president of PEN International, Bangladesh chapter.
Dark, blue night
Like wild leopard's skin, I spread out my hair The dark night uncurls with his roaring fleet; I pounce on his chest, bare foot, like Kali–
On rainy days and reading
The fact of the matter was this: the poem had been written, the call had been answered, and as lofty as it sounds—at that moment there I was, as Frank O'Hara put aptly—"the center of all beauty! / writing these poems!/ Imagine!".
Memory
Memory is a winding range Of coniferous mountain pine Catching the fiery light
Concrete sorrow
We grasp on and we hold tight.