(Original: ????-????)
Your luxury cars are plying through the streets
And your big ships are cruising over the oceans.
The fast steam engines are running on railways,
The country is filled with plants and machinery :
Can you tell me whose contributions are all these?
With whose blood are your buildings
Painted red? Dismantle them and you’ll find
On each piece of brick vividly written the names.
You may not know; but each and
Every grain of dust is aware of it,
The meaning of those roads, vessels, trains,
And of those decorative palaces.
The good days are coming soon :
Day after day your debts are being inflated
You must pay back those heavy debts.
Those who with hard labour broke the rugged hills
With hammer, shovel and pick-axe,
Their bones today are strewn on either side
Of those very roads. Those who, in order to render
You service, became day-labourers.
Those who covered their cherished body with dust
Only to carry you and your belongings,
They are indeed the real human beings,
they are the saints.
I sing their ‘inner voice’ through my songs.
Marching over their painful suffering breasts
The New Revolution will raise its new head.
You are reclining at ease
On the top of the third floor,
While we are rotting at the bottom;
Still you love to be
Addressed as “My Lord”?
Absurd! That cannot be !!
The helm of this world must remain under
Those, whose mind and soul are soaked with
Sweet love for the motherland;
Those who journeyed with others through
The tiresome roads and covered their
Feet with dust; I shall pick up
That very dust from their feet and put it
on my head as a holy sacred offering.
Smeared with the blood of the pain stricken
Suffering humanity of the world
the new sun of the new dawn is rising
above the horizon.
Break open today those ugly rusty doors
Of your narrow congested heart;
Take off those artificial garments of yours
Which look unnatural like coloured leather.
Look at the concentrated condensed air
Appearing deep blue in the sky,
Let them enter free a frolicsome way
direct into your inner hearts –
Unlock all those obstructing clutches!
Let the entire blue Heaven fall down in our midst,
Let the moon, the sun and the stars shower on us.
Let all people of all times
and all climes come together
And stand up at the same confluence to listen to
The anthem of great unity under one flag-
If you torment here a single soul
The pain resounds in a crescendo
In the aggrieved hearts of all others.
Insult to a single person here means
Humiliating the whole of humanity
An insult to all of us.
Today is the day of upheavel
Against the heart-rending agony and pain
Of the great Human-beings of the world.
Translation: Amir Hossain Chowdhury
(Courtesy: Mohammad Nurul Huda, Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam in English Translation)
Today in ecstatic elation of creation
(Original : ?? ?????? ????? ???????)
Today in ecstatic elation of creation
Laughs my gesture laughs my eyes
Laughs my blood in scorching circulation
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Today in the pool of my life congested,
There the torrent rises forming surge
in the screech of breaking obstructing door ahead!
Appears laughing, appears weeping,
Appears freedom, appears blocking,
Burst out my words bursting out of my chest
Laughs the glee of bitter sensation.
Appears that pang of the chest in dejection
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Arrives depression, sighs desperation,
Chest-piercing sighs conflicting creation,
Rising up seas, swinging the sky and the wind rushing,
The Chokro speeds up piercing sky, the trident of Shiva arriving!
That comet and meteor,
Want to reverse the creation,
Today witnessing that in my chest laughs flowers of lakhs of garden
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Today laughs the fire, breathes Falgun,
Shoots from blood-bathed quiver, Modon,
Causing the Polash, Ashok and Shimul’s extermination
Scatters color of holi in the costume of directions
Oh, in the maiden’s greenish ornamentation;
Today surrounding me within my blood bathed heart appears variegation
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Today holding the quiver of deceiving gesture,
There all the beautiful maidens appear,
Someone with blood shaded anklet in feet, or someone being fire,
Someone haughty–overflowed chest with the tears of eyes of painful desire!
Beside me is the tune of their heart, ‘Bursts out my chest-still can’t speak’
There I let them hear their words
Comes tears in my eyes
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Today arrives dawn, dusk and noon,
Arrives the nearer, arrives the distant,
Arrives the rhythmic craze without bondage
At the crazy festivity of Gazan with outburst of jubilation
There arrives the month Ashwin with flexible Sheuli
Laughs dews on the edges of grass.
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Today rises up the sea, the desert laughs out,
The earth and the trees shivering in the garden ground,
Arrives storm earth-sinking, the high tide overflowing
The tune of Bhoirobi floating,
At my right is the new born, old aged dead at my left!
My mind flies today as if a mad horse without obstruction!
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Today in ecstatic elation of creation!
Translation : Anis Fatema
The little girl and the squirrel
(Original : ???? ? ?????????)
Squirrel, O squirrel, Do you eat guava?
Molasses with puffed rice? Milk with rice? Green lemon? Pumpkin?
Little kitten? Puppies? Also those?
You’re a witch, with voracious tummy,
You eat alone whatever get yummy!
All the lemons fresh and green
Have finished alone dipping chin!
How proudly raising tail you’re gazing with eyes blinking?
You selfish eater! Go away! Friendship with you I am dropping!
Squirrel! You monkey-faced! Shall I throw you a blow?
Want to see? Shall I call Rangada? At you brickbat to throw.
Will you give a guava? Go you mean minded!
That’s why you have a tapped nose!
Owl-eyed! Galloping at a stretch
Alone you finish everything that you get!
Your belly will be filled with germs! And mouth with itching!
O God, one insect, make enter into its belly!
Isshh! Please don’t eat guava of that large size too!
Please give me one of them, It’s favourite of mine also!
Squirrel! Will you be my little sister? Or sister-in-law? Hmm!
Or Ranga didi? Then please give a guava! Umm!
O my lord! You’re funny looking, naked?
Will you take a frock? Or two dresses?
Don’t eat more guavas then, please,
Also the lemons you have to leave!
You’re fleeing, making faces? O mom, come and see!-
Go to die! O squirrel! You eat nasty!
Translation : Md. Huzaifa Islam Twaha
