Syed Shamsul Haq :
I’ve kept my door open this morning
All sorts of light streams in
At times the farmland looks so green
At times dawn’s sun completely crimson!
A highway flooded with slogans-and plumb in the middle
Of the floodwater I see a boat sail,
On its mast a nation dreaming of days to come
Certainly, history promised us just such an Independence Day dawn
I saw just such a dawn
When peering into the future
And singing morning’s raga Bhairavi every now and then.
Independence!
It’s the garland in my heart!
It’s the wing with which I fly.
It’s for you that this day the familial world appears so striking,
The heart still seems a highway,
The river still appears to be coursing its way with so graceful a motion,
And it’s for you that Mujib’s face adorns every Bengali canvas!
In one life I built such a boat,
And with the mechanics of independence
And the sound of water
Lapping out of my heart and flowing into my ears
I’ve been handling the cycle of the fool moon and the new one-
In only one life! In all these years
With this very boat, O independence
We’ve been traversing history
And the Golden Bengal of thirteen hundred rivers
Of such bubbling sounds and oceanic dreams
Has been coming closer and closer to us with every passing year!
I’ve kept my door open this morning
All sorts of light streams in
At times the farmland looks so green
At times dawn’s sun completely crimson!
A highway flooded with slogans-and plumb in the middle
Of the floodwater I see a boat sail,
On its mast a nation dreaming of days to come
Certainly, history promised us just such an Independence Day dawn
I saw just such a dawn
When peering into the future
And singing morning’s raga Bhairavi every now and then.
Independence!
It’s the garland in my heart!
It’s the wing with which I fly.
It’s for you that this day the familial world appears so striking,
The heart still seems a highway,
The river still appears to be coursing its way with so graceful a motion,
And it’s for you that Mujib’s face adorns every Bengali canvas!
In one life I built such a boat,
And with the mechanics of independence
And the sound of water
Lapping out of my heart and flowing into my ears
I’ve been handling the cycle of the fool moon and the new one-
In only one life! In all these years
With this very boat, O independence
We’ve been traversing history
And the Golden Bengal of thirteen hundred rivers
Of such bubbling sounds and oceanic dreams
Has been coming closer and closer to us with every passing year!
-Translation: Fakrul Alam
