Baitullah Quaderee

DAWN

A kneel-down morning
keeps me stranded to think
as if it was gradually getting pregnant.
Its spirit, and the emotional stage
of its heart, easily transmitted
to the third section of the dawn.
Feelings and festivity slough
through its leafs.
In its unfolded lustrous vaginal lips
the sparkling sunlight
penetrates a thin-shadowed wave.
Those who come to me now—
Socrates, Alexander, Freud,
or even Hawking and Tagore,
they don’t show up at the turn of my well being.
My mornings not so subtle as their nights.
With my own electrical charge, therefore,
I permeated a little further
as of yesterday or even the day before.
Again I have arrived today
for the equal share of flesh and blood-stain sheets.
Since, Columbus diverted my boat
towards the wrong channel, and thought,
for the betrayal of the wind, that I would
evaporate the same aroma
as the sizzling red meat.
So, the kneel-down winter morning,
as the amass milk-like pellucid baby’s,
and elder’s glance
at the third section of the dawn,
carefully walks away with my
evening writings,
and like the lost youth,
someone calls out:
Let’s get it, let’s get it, let’s get it now.

LORD

Don’t be upset lord, don’t be hesitant yet.
Looking at this heartiest marrow, my lord,
you drink some water, walk a little,
and do some exercise holding the stick.
Later, if you shrink in your width and height,
then, like your wife, continue on the vocal practice,
without waking the neighbors. Do you have a wife?
Without waking others, you wake to break your heart.
Lord, do you know that your neighbor’s heart is
melted in a newly bought silk sari? Now, let’s make up
your mind, and tell me, have you ever seen her?
Have you ever recognized the village that is engulfed
by flood-water? The surging water failed to find
its depth. My lord, let’s make up your mind, and tell me,
what is worse, the thief or the habit of being theft?

A WEAVER LIGHT-BIRD

Who asked me to
weave the light?
Could anyone ever
weave light like this?
It’s not
like
knitting
a woolen sweater,
that would be finished before winter.
The eggs of light
arranged in rows,
in a circular array,
it has been spinning around
while clustered in a drop of water—
Is it easy to
weave that
light?

A festival of men and women.
They are now meeting
at the edge of each other’s desire.
In a consumer-less dusk,
long and pale;
after all the hugging and kissing,
they ignite the light
and
then switch it off
faster.
And I reckon, I am not at all
in my own habitude,
have gone to
the lover-land
burning my flesh.
A flock of birds,
faster than sound,
burns me with its fire,
and I
then keep one
weaving the light,
like a weaver
bird.

DECEMBER

Last night, I embraced the hilly moon
more than anything else, beside
the weak branches of the hollowed nature,
dry but palpable, in the midst of the wind’s respiration.
I observed the fog stretching
its suspended horse-mouth
up to the street and ignited the light,
a flickering light on a fish-ring
in river-water.
Someone, at least, was awarded the kingship
at that meeting—someone, yet,
with the help of visual lamentation
made it up to the marriage, and then,
there started the days of nakedness.
Fish, too, stayed naked for the whole day.
Along with the fringe-ring, and sprinkling
aroma, last night,
jumping off the quicksand
danced the girl’s tender breasts,
like a cotton candy swaying
in ragged December air.

Translated from the Bengali by Hassanal Abdullah


Dhaka, Bangladesh