Quazi Johirul Islam
Dear readers, we will now read the poetry of the popular poet of Bangladesh.
POEMS BY QUAZI JOHIRUL ISLAM
Translated from Bangla by Prof. Dr. Fakrul Alam
1.
DEMANDING LONGEVITY
One day I too burst into protest like marginal people do
Clamoring for longevity.
Despite evolving for millions of years
How could us civilized, highly intelligent creatures
have such short life spans?
This should never have happened!
When a man succeeds to stand tall on his own merit
Comes the call: “Exit from this world….”
How ridiculous! No way one should accept such a summon!
A man with a life span of only 60, 70 or 80?
Maximum 90, or—with an exception or two—a century—
Does this make any sense?
Humans should live as long as they want to.
Like a ruler of any impoverished nation,
God has seemingly dictated even our retirement age!
Look at the developed countries of the world, O God,
No retirement age there! One retires when one wants to
And no one is forced into retirement.
Humans should live or die as long as they want to.
I want the freedom to choose my death
I called out to all at the top of my voice—
“Let us all die only when we want to!”
To my protests the Compassionate Almighty paid heed
And came down to our protest meet.
Putting a hand on my shoulder, he said,
“How long would you like to live?”
I could have asked Him then to give me
Four or five hundreds, or even a thousand years of life
But I didn’t, not being the kind of an opportunistic leader
Who’ll slow down a movement by accepting bribes!
I’d confronted the Almighty face to face
And told him: “Till the time you can ensure the right
To die, only when a human being wants to die,
Our movement for this cause will go on and on!
A smile on his face, God said: “Haven’t you realized yet
It’s up to every human being to decide his or her fate!
I’ve shark bone hangers holding up millions of fleshy dresses
All kinds of fleshy dresses sway in the breeze,
But what makes you think such dresses equate life?”
“Life, for sure, is strewn across the ways of the world
Marked by the footsteps of your kind
Every day you fidget and frown
And draw images one way or the other.
Serve those who are in distress or need help
Embrace trees and burst into tears
Such going-on typify your lives.”
“Clothes wear and tear
There comes a day when they have to be thrown away
Do you want eternal life for your attire?”
You’ll live by the footsteps you etch on earth
Didn’t your predecessors themselves decide
on how long they would live?
Didn’t Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha,
Socrates, Rabindranath, and Einstein
Decide in their own ways how long they would be living?
Decide on your own how long you want to live
Stop worrying about how long your clothes will last!”
2.
A HUNGER FOR STORIES
As a boy I heard the same story from my father again and again:
My grandfather hadn’t left behind for his son any kind of plot
Where seeds could be planted
that would yield a garden full of yummy stories
In the same vein, a hunger for stories
engrossed me in my childhood and teens.…
I know that all ye still to be born children
Will cry glumly like I once had, hungry for stories.
That is why I’d braved cresting, roaring waves
Cooked soups of stories on immigrant cookers on wintry nights;
Diving to the bottom of the sea, I’d seen how marine species
Dance to the rhythm of hidden waves,
And write on whale bodies of the flowing stories of ocean!
By empty hand I captured wild bison in the African desert;
Standing in chilling North Pole blizzards
I was able to feel the divine stories of stormy nights;
From Gibraltar I fetched the bright light of new stories
Which I then strewed on Casablanca’s ancient eyes!
Out of my sweat and blood
I create endless stories for coming generations
For I know that even though all other causes of hunger may die
What will only survive in the dark is
the hunger for more and more stories.
From wintry Prairies to grey Savannas
And in all pathways of the world
I’ve been sowing seeds of new stories every day.
Climbing down from the lap of juicy fruit-filled gardens,
Seated on the soft mat that is earth,
They keep developing the craving for new stories endlessly.
Endlessly, the hunger for untold stories
Vibrate all sleepy pathways of the world!
3.
DIASPORIC DELUSIONS
Rows of people lined up in hangers,
Immigrant joys and sorrows, black, white, and brown.
Audible tears in their pockets;
side bags full of memories of a faraway land.
Six-storied buildings in 10 Beanibazar or Gowainghat,
Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags.
One or two dreams held on to and still polished….
Of a boy holding his head
six and a half feet high on a Harvard stairway,
And a daughter with a stethoscope on her neck,
paycheck running into six digits,
so bright, so dazzling!
But at present?
A damp, dank basement, sleepless nights weighed down by dreams
Such are our diasporic delusions.
4.
ONE NIGHT IN BOSTON
How long can a night be? Even a skin-parching summer night?
On the wall paired trees, one full of leaves, the other winter-bare
Each a witness to how opposites attract as is the case with us.
The room has no opening—only an alert pair of feet outside,
Perhaps of a couple, out for the night….
A hundred-year-old bliss-filled moaning of lovers
Imprisoned under a contemporary wallpaper.
Entering this room without an opening
is forbidden even for dawn.
Nevertheless, morning is here too,
in sync with the body clock’s rhythm.
Thongs have been packed a long time back,
even the rubber sandals
Yet inquisitive eyes keep watching, prying
The one thing certain
At the end is the return of the youngest member of the box.
Certain?
Alas, can everything be ascertained —everything—
On a skin-parching August night—
even a yellow suitcase’s contents?
5.
GREED
These skyscraper rows by the Hudson—
monuments of an almost blind civilization
No more than warehouses of ever-increasing human greed
Each a well-furnished, well-decorated prison built for its occupants.
Each a timeworn site for displaying mind-forged manacles!
Most humans prefer independence but are fated to be prisoners
Because of their greed and competitive natures
Only humans who stand taller than the greed are truly independent.
6.
I GOT HOLD OF THE GIRL’S HAND
Not in the light nor in darkness
But in verse I held on to the trembling hand of the girl
Right at the beginning of my teens.
On her lips I sowed 11 two olden Bengali alphabets,
Under which impeccable letters
Blushed the dove-like lips of a face bowed in embarrassment.
To smell the musky fragrance emitted by her navel
I suddenly flung a 12 three-letter word before everyone.
In my heart’s fiery chamber, classical rhythms sprang,
Sparked entirely by the touch of those twinned letters.
Till then I hadn’t composed any line revealing desire
Though innumerable rhetorical
and prosodic options were there for my use.
How miraculously her deep breathing now pervaded my poem!
Then there was no light in this globe
No darkness to hide oneself either
Only rhyme and rhythm, beginnings and endings,
And conflicting emotions and fragments.
Formlessness reigned in the wilderness of art then
What existed in me though was an insatiable appetite….
And with that insatiable appetite I would grab the girl’s hand!
7.
THE POET
A poet leads the lives of many persons in his self
Don’t see a poem then merely
as a reflection of one person’s life.
But just as many people may flow in a poet’s consciousness
the opposite can happen too—
While, on the one hand it might mirror parallel existence
It can also mirror a generational downward flow.
Which is to say, a life can flow from generation to generation
in different bodies
And by the same token the flow can be upwardly mobile too!
Is the poet Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or Buddhist?
The answer—no!
Is the poet an atheist?
The answer—no!
Is the poet White, Black, Asian, Semitic, or a blonde Russian?
The answer—no!
Is the poet a democrat, a republican, a conservative or a liberal?
The answer—no!
Is the poet an alien?
The answer once again—no!
Is the poet a drunkard, an evil person?
The answer—no!
Is the poet a superhuman being?
The answer once again—no!
Is the poet than nothing at all?
The answer is “no”.
Is the poet then a composite of all things?
The answer to this question is “no” as well!
A poet is everywhere but is nowhere to be found
Just as the water streaming from
all five oceans compose a poet’s teardrop
In the tear drop of a father who has just lost a child
Exists all the poets of the world!
One can’t contain a poet in any one container.
Except the label of a poet
No other label is applicable for a poet.
8.
I’LL TAKE POETRY ALONG
Lately, I’ve been thinking that after writing a poem
For a few days I’ll be hanging it on the balcony
It’ll fly with the wind, get wet in the rain and dry in the sun
Birds will peck away to bring out the poem’s ripe seed!
On weekends I’ll take the poem to Jackson Heights
And see there the brotherhood of mixed races on display
One of these days I’ll take the poem to the Mexican frontier
And make it listen to the cry of detained immigrants
When a Syrian refugee child lies on a Manhattan footpath
Seeking alms with outstretched palms in unison,
Instead of a dime or quarter I’ll give the child a poem
I’ll see beneath its tear-faced mother’s veiled body leaning
A trembling baby. My poem will observe how deep is the ocean
formed from a mother’s teardrops!
Through an oil pipeline I’ll find a way
of sending away one or two of them
I’ll know then how many drops of oil transmits
through the selfish pipeline
in exchange of how much blood.
Perhaps I’ll never again have the occasion to go to Afghanistan
But if a UN colleague goes there for work
I’ll put two poems in his backpack
So that they learn about Kabul mysteries.
Under the crayons of an autistic child
I’ll spread all my poems
they’ll become selfless with spectacular shades.
I’ll take my poems along with me wherever I go—
To brothels, war fields, kitchens, stables
Five-star hotels, ballrooms, and even inside the sewage drainpipes!
The amorous cries of couples copulating ring out rhythmically
The baby just born cry out poetically to greet the world
And announce its arrival,
Listening to which the mother utters a poem in its entirety!
Does civilization build on any other rhythm
except that of a laborer’s hammer?
How amazing is the way poetry emanates
from a train to spread to its environs?
In crop fields green poems sway to the lilting summer breeze
And in fall season red-yellow poems fall from the trees,
Like a leafy rain!
What other light spreads in the rising sun other than a poem?
Does a bird call out in another way
except poetry to wake the world up?
The mystery of creation is poetry;
it’s also the code needed to solve it
Poetry is in our conscious, subconscious,
And our very own unconscious!
What other consciousness can be brighter than a poem
Since poetry is the domain of all consciousness.
The death of a human is nothing but an exquisite poem!
9.
THE DEAD BODY
In vain they tried to bring the man inside the palace again and again.
Not in the silver-plated gateway built for 13Kauravas Kings’ descendants,
Nor in the gilded, diamond-studded, lion-arched door of 14Pandavas kings,
Through nowhere could this outwardly all too ordinary man be brought in!
All attempts to bring the tied-up man inside the lion-fronted door failed.
This dwarf of a man’s body appeared to stretch from earth’s floor to the sky!
The lion-arched gateway built by the haughty now seemed utterly small—
So small that let alone the body, even one toe wouldn’t enter those doors.
But there was a time when countless triumphant warriors had entered through
The lion-arched gateway. Kings and ministers of innumerable countries too
Had entered through it swiftly. On elephant back, conquering princes, heads high
And treading proudly, had come in, acknowledging the salutes directed at them!
Now every day countless wise and learned people from many, many countries—
Scientists, physicians, poets/writers and musicians--all devoted to their work—
Enter, stooping or crawling through this archway, all hunched up!
And yet why did this splendid gate seem nothing at all to this nondescript man?
Neither the Kauravas nor the Pandavas kings had conceded anything to him.
But frustrating their designs, the man died one day
While looking up, head focused totally and forever skywards!
Over time, clouds formed from his spent sight
Dissipated to elegiac music.
To cleanse the dead body ritually
The king’s attendants brought silver and golden coffins
But the same drama was enacted again!
Such a small-sized corpse;
And yet once a silver or golden coffin was taken near it
The corpse would turn into a huge delta-shaped township
As high as a mountain, and as flowing as a river!
Like tiny matchboxes the coffins lay
Next to his body, as if belittling their own smallness.
In the end, they decided to keep the man’s corpse under open skies,
And leave it lying in the middle of a huge courtyard.
When night descends on the pathway, from the dead body emits
A phosphorescent light that scatters, like sparks in fireworks.
That light can startle some, as ghosts can,
While others still see in them the twin moons of Mars!
.
10.
FLYING MEN
A man in flight descended like a plane
Or like his models for flying—Icarus and the Wright brothers.
He glided down and down like them or the fabled flying bird.
How could this happen? How come his ability to fly?
After all, a man is not a bird—
But this amazing man folded his big wings inside his body
And sat down beside me in the swaying sunshine!
While swaying, he said smilingly,
“There was a time when a man would be nude even in biting cold
Darkness. He would swim under floating ice in the South Pole
Or make himself a bed at the feet of trees to spend nights,
Even throwing out ferocious animals, to do so.
It took three billion years of evolution for you humans
To stand up straight. How can you forget you crossed
Countless rivers like the Awash, the Nile and the Volga
To shed the savage hairy growths, you had in you!
Indeed, that must have been three million years ago.
A lot of history’s dust have piled up in all sorts of scriptural pages
Many suns have drowned in blood showers
And many moons have strayed from their orbits,
Swept away by salty waters. Now you extract words from ether.
Immerse in the wind memories of each and every face you’ve met.
Won’t men become fish next or birds afterwards?
Or break barriers imposed by oceanic waves cresting?
Or traverse the infinite blue of space
All by themselves in bodies that aren’t like machines?
Three and a half thousand years from now
Men will be more and more bird or fish-like!”
As I looked at the man’s eyes suspiciously
He shook his shoulder
As if to say, “Since I’ve learned to fly,
I must traverse time as well as the sky!”
Swaying in the tremendous swing of summer
My body flew skywards
And I kept tearing apart the hidden curtains of space
With my two hands!
Quazi Johirul Islam, professionally an International Professional Officer of the United Nations, currently posted at the UN Headquarters, New York, USA, a poet and a writer has published 90 books, half of them are collection of poetry. He was awarded “The Peace Run Torch Bearer Award” by the Sri Chinmoy Centre, USA, also received many other awards and honors from USA, Bangladesh and India.
Fakrul Alam is a former professor of the department of English literature of the University of Dhaka. He is the top ranking translator from Bangla to English, especially he is renowned for poetry translation.
