The clouds of dust to distant horizon
make no discernible sign
in their endless magnitude,
rising out of the hoofs
of the turbulent Arabian horses.
O pioneer, your advancement is second to none.
An endless struggle for the oppressed
with strong perception,
exciting love with an organic exuberance
in the brilliant and razing rays of the sun.
That is your name-it echoes like a lyre :
Equality in Islam, you are for equality,
you are for the emancipation of humanity.
Let the conscience and reasons rise above all,
apartheid and inequality must depart,
there the tyrants must breathe their last.
The treacherous ones must be annihilated.
There’s no defeat for the heroes of wisdom.
The invincible standard of Islam is unfurled.
O, the oppressed of the world,
are not its ideals verily in you?
Bring light to your eyes and see unrestrained,
the way of life, let tiredness come.
Wipe away the sweats of the body
and leave the temple-like body pure and sacrosanct.
Pierce through the darkness and stamping your feet,
mark your brilliance. O the struggleous sun,
O the trumpet of life,
let it sound and resound through your fiery lire.
In the minaret’s let the tyrants burn
and the triumphant sign be held on your forehead.
Let the rhymes around vibrate with sound,
with your proud youth invincible
violent motion of its hands and mind,
your world- conquering inheritance of unfailing youth,
go, lustrous, unparalleled power, the straight path
has brought about the future expectation.
Tread over the vast expanse
of the thorny and impassable desert.
The horseman who launched the roaring waves
of the high seas cannot be lost in the darkness yet.
Defiant of the aggressive ages,
he makes his advance towards eternity.
This is the struggle for existence
and death is nothing to it.
The death comes like an emperor
and goes when history speaks.
In the history explosion takes place again and again,
out of the violent agitation rise the hungry ones.
Indictment hangs over the exploiters to be punished by
the flow of tears of the multitudinous masses
which dash over the coast of the world.
The horseman rushes at a moment’s breath
and the sparkle of fire speaks for the struggle of life
death is insignificant.
The sparkle of hope brings about each great moment.
Wake up, wake up, O conqueror of death,
life is so great that the death is belittled.
Let the bell of death ring, ring and die to its old sound,
that’s the voice of age.
Those who have not heard
the fast-moving progress of time
let those children become young boys and girls
to tap the head of the tempest,
and arrest the thunders.
Let them hate the unjust
and avenge the narrowness of lies,
and defy degeneration and ruin.
Let those frenzied lives of fire
blaze through all the houses of tyrants,
and let them work hand in hand to conquer sorrow .
Those new breeds come again and again
against the unbearable waves of time
and make the heart blazing.
Let the bad dreams at once go away and wipe out all tears,
unbow the arrows of life.
O sun, strike the unjust.
O conqueror of death!
There can be no failure in fighting for the truth,
life is immortal. *
*This poem was written in 1952 and recited by the poet in a charity show held at the Chitra Cinema Hall, Jessore, as arranged by the Cultural Association, Jessore in aid to medical treatment to the Rebel Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1952.
