For my motherland
Al Mahmud
What else does a poet have to offer? You take my filtered language
Take my poem-
My blood is valued more than that of the ink of my pen. You take my drops of tears
Let us hope that the drops enliven your dead streams
Overwhelm the rivers with the scour of muddy water
And flow towards the sea.
You take my orbit off. If it helps your vision for the future and pierce
The twenty-first century like two sharpen lances, take it.
With my skin I cobble shoes for your reddened feet,
Please put it on
And walk towards the horizon of tomorrow.
Let the world see that all my songs have turned into birds to find their nests in your body.
My words took the shape of fish to flock around the frontiers of your sari
My rhythm under your veil is swinging as your necklace.
And my similes?
You know I found nothing in the world that can be compared with you.
My mother in eternal sufferings
Your riches are your enemies as the doe is hostile to its own fragrance.
When I see flying vultures all around I can well guess why your green fields
Are laden like old banyan covered with the droppings of
Ferocious and carnivorous birds.
Shall we be able to protect you, mum? A few unworthy children we are.
Yet your grains call us raising hands.
We are trembling at the signals of your dead rivers
Your mountains are breasts of mothers sunk in love
Extend standing invitation.
Your fields along the horizon are like the striae of mothers abdomen
Where we fountain from
Who says that you are the vanquished one? You are the everwinner
And you are a midwife of millions of God-fearing people.
Is there anything that your children do not give you
While witches with no roots play the disk throwing game of pasha with you
They bet on your body and limbs
And they want to make you a slave maid and enwrap you in the
bark of slavery.
But your children know, you are our veiled mother
Awake in her belief of one and only God
You shall come out for sure of the smoke of idol worship.
Your rivers will once again flow towards the sea. The hill of Chimbuk
Will be proud of maternity the way the tip of your nipples are proud of.
The pawn for pasha of witches will one day be thrown into the
darkness of history
Your farmers and their spouse will sing songs of freedom
This is the way we arise the self in you. Hope is you your future and reliance.
Yonder their in the fields your bard have taken up songs of future.
Songs of praise of the Almighty Allah.
And songs of tomorrow’s pleasure.
Don’t you think all these notes will inundate
Your corn fields in green?
Translation : MA Momen
Bangladesh
Aslam Sani
Please don’t fall asleep
By dreaming nonstop
Please don’t fall asleep Bangladesh,
Wake up, wake up
With the dream-obsession of three million martyrs
Don’t fall asleep Bangladesh.
It was you who woke us up repeatedly
In Fifty-two and Seventy-one
‘The struggle this time is for our freedom
The struggle this time is for independence- glorified democracy
It was you who spread the sounds of protests
Against all injustices
Don’t fall asleep Bangladesh.
It is you who like a mother
Smile and weep at the joy and sorrow of offspring
Please give us sanctuary on your soil
Love everybody equally
Finish off the rogues and sinners
Your eyes carry unwavering dreams
Please don’t fall asleep Bangladesh.
Translation: Helal Uddin Ahmed
