Introduction
Bengal, Bangladesh is a marginal region spanning the world’s largest deltaic river basin. The political history of this region was the subject of the rule and exploitation of colonialism and imperialism for centuries. The revolt and protest of the oppressed people warranted attention. Just as these political realities have shaped the people of Bengal to be rebellious and revolutionary, so too have the harsh environment, climate, and terrain made them sentimental and thoughtful. A cocktail of emotion, thoughtfulness, and rebellion is evident in the history of Bengali poetry. Questions of life, philosophies of embodied knowledge, and literal and figurative love can be found in this poetry, from the first known Bengali poems of Charyapada (9thc CE or earlier) to the present day. Simultaneously, protest against exploitation, deprivation, classism, inequalities, and oppression flow through this long history of Bengali poetry. That the history of political poetry in Bengali dates back to ancient times, and that political consciousness is an essential aspect of Bengali poetry are, therefore, clear.
In this issue of Shuddhashar on political poetry, we have translated a few twentieth century Bengali poems into English, to present them to global readers. The poems appearing are: “Bastard, I demand rice” by Rafique Azad; “Beloved” by Sukanta Bhattacharya; “We have not come to shed tears” by Mahbub ul Alam Chowdhury; “The stench of corpses is in the air” by Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah; “Where will we keep this corpse?” by Shamsur Rahman; “Guerilla” by Syed Shamsul Haque; “A conversation in Kurukshetra” by Abul Hasan; and “This valley of death is not my country” by Nabarun Bhattacharya.
Translating poetry is difficult and time-consuming, and as all poets know, some ideas are simply not translatable. We therefore gave priority to the editor and translator’s preferences in selecting the poems. These translations were undertaken with care by writer and Shuddhashar’s editorial board member, Ikhtisad Ahmed.
Just as artistic representations of the Language Movement of 1952, the Liberation War of 1971, and opposition to authoritarianism are present in these poems, so too do they contain the yearning, call, commitment, and dream to build an egalitarian local and global society that will keep alight the eternal flame of humanity. We hope that through these translated poems, poetry enthusiasts around the world shall gain a small insight into the political feeling, passion, and power of Bengali poetry. – Editor
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Bastard, I demand rice | Rafiq Azad
I am starving: in my belly, my flesh and bones
I feel wave upon wave of insatiable hunger;
As drought sets fire to the grain fields in Chaitra
So, with God’s grace, burns my hunger, burns my flesh;
Two handfuls twice a day is all I ask for,
Mortals ask for and receive multitudinous blessings, they seek:
House, car, fortune – some even lust after fame,
Mine is but a humble request, as the arid desert within burns
I want rice – a direct demand – cold or hot;
It matters not that it may be a small or sizeable ration
Of red rice – I want an earthenware full of rice;
I will cease all other demands if only I get two handfuls twice daily;
Scarcely an unreasonable desire, for there is none carnal,
I asked not for that sari tied under that naval, nor the woman to whom they belong;
Whomsoever desires her can take her; bequeath her unto whomsoever you desire,
Be aware: I have no need for such trivial earthly things.
Beloved | Sukanta Bhattacharya
I am a guard at the border today.
Overcoming many a blood-drenched path
Have I ground to a halt here –
At the frontier of my homeland.
Overcast Tunisia to sunny Italy,
Sunny Italy to revolutionary France I ran,
Destined by the stars,
Seized rifle in hand, indomitable:
France to neighbouring Burma too.
Body clad in soldier’s coarse uniform today,
Indomitable rifle still in hand,
The pride of victory and strength riding wave upon wave of blood,
I am a guard at the border today.
The blue sky has sent me an invitation today,
The winds of my homeland have borne a request,
A green letter held open in front of my eyes:
Tell me, how am I to avoid him?
How am I to avoid this coarse uniform?
The war has ended. Peace stretches across the fields,
Its cool air caresses my eyes,
Each passing moment loosens my grip on the rifle,
Desires to peel off my skin this coarse uniform,
The moon rises at night: my eyes know not sleep.
How I have thought of you for days,
In the midst of awaiting word of the enemy’s move,
In the midst of exploding shells.
How my mind has strayed, in the midst of winning the war,
How my heart has burned in the embers of remorse,
Thinking of you and yours.
I left you in the midst of poverty,
Threw you into the flames of famine,
By storm and flood, by the painful misery of plagues
Your existence was repeatedly endangered.
And I but ran from one battlefield to another.
I know not if you are alive today,
Starved during famine or drowned in the flood
I know not.
Yet I write to you today, write with hope undimmed:
The time has come to return home.
I know, not a soul is waiting for me
In garlands and flags, lamps and on Mars;
I know, not a pair of lips will part in welcome
Heroism will not be rewarded by the collective happiness.
Yet, a heart will dance to the beat of my presence,
Your heart.
I desire war no more, it has ended;
The mind wants not to venture to Indonesia,
Forward no more,
It is now time to return.
Many a war have I fought for others,
I fight now for you and me.
When asked, “What did you gain from all your wars?” I answer:
In Tunisia I found victory,
In Italy friendship of the citizens,
In France freedom’s incantation,
And in thornless Burma, the urgency to return home.
I am that lamplighter
Who lights lamps on highways and streets at dusk
But has not the ability to light a lamp in his own home;
In my own home unbearable darkness reigns.
We have not come to shed tears | Mahbub ul Alam Chowdhury
They were forty, perhaps more
Who gave their lives there – under Ramna’s sun-drenched krishnachura
For language, for mother language – for Bengali.
Those who gave their lives there
For the dignity of a nation’s glorious culture,
The heritage of Alaol,
Of Kaykobad, Rabindranath and Nazrul,
For their literature, their poetry.
Those who gave their lives there
For the tome
Of Palashpur’s Mokbul Ahmed –
For the ballad of Ramesh Sheel,
For Jasimuddin’s “Shojon Badiya’s Ghat”.
Those who gave their lives
For Bhatiali, Baul, Kirtan, Gazal,
Nazrul’s, “Purer than pure gold
Is the soil of my homeland.”
For these two lines.
For the soil of their homeland,
On the soil of Ramna Field
Like the countless fallen krishnachura petals
Forty souls, unspoilt, full of vigour,
Within the husk of sprouting seeds
I can see the endless flow of blood from their chests.
The blood from the chests of young Rameswar and Abdus Salam,
The blood from the chests of the university’s very best.
I can see every crimson drop of theirs
On Ramna’s lush green grass
Flaming fire, flaming, flaming.
Each a piece of finely crafted diamond
Forty of the university’s very best gems,
Lived had they, would have become
Pakistan’s most valued treasures
Within whom breathed
Lincoln, Arago, Einstein,
Within whom breathed
This century’s, civilisation’s
Most progressive ideologies.
Where those forty gems gave their lives
We have not come to shed tears.
Those who came here with loaded rifles at the ready,
Those who came with orders to brutally, ruthlessly kill,
To them we have
Come not to plead for our language.
We have come to demand the murderous tyrants be hanged.
We know they were killed,
Mercilessly fired upon.
Amongst them was an Osman, like you,
Like your father, one of theirs
Is a clerk, or in one of East Bengal’s
Secluded villages the father
Toils to crop gold from the soil,
Perhaps one father is
A government employee.
Like you or I alive
They too could have been
Today,
Like me, perhaps one
Had his wedding day set,
Like you, perhaps one,
Hoping to read the newly arrived letter from mother,
Had left it on the table to join the protests.
With chests full of boundless hopes and dreams
Those who were butchered by the tyrants’ bullets,
In those martyrs’ names
I demand they be hanged.
Those who wanted to exile my mother language
I demand be hanged.
Those whose commands caused these innocent deaths
I demand be hanged.
Those who on these fresh corpses
Have stepped, ascending to power
For those traitors
I demand justice.
At the very place on that open field
My countrymen demand to see
The convicted murderers shot.
Pakistan’s first martyrs
Are these forty gems.
The nation’s very best forty boys
With mother, father, new bride, children
In this earth’s bosom each
Dreamt of
Building familial lives,
Those who dreamt of taking
Einstein’s scientific research even further,
Those who dreamt of giving their lives
To the pursuit of using molecular energy
For the good of humanity,
Those who dreamt of composing
A poem more beautiful, more complete
Than Rabindranath’s “Bashiwallah”,
Those martyred brothers of mine
Where you gave your lives
From there, even a thousand years hence,
The blood smears on the soil
Cannot be erased by the march of civilisation.
Though countless obscure voices may break the silence
The university bell shall toll
Every day to mark
The hour of your historic martyrdoms.
Though rain and storm may shake
The very foundations of the university
The halo around your martyred names
Shall never be dimmed.
The oppressive hand of the murderous tyrants
Can never diminish nor defeat
Your many dreams and hopes;
On the day we emerge victorious from our fight
On the day of justice
O my martyred brothers,
On that day from the depths of silence
Your voices
Shall flow
With the soaring cry of independence;
On that day the citizens of my land
Shall hang, shall hang
The murderous tyrants from the gallows;
Your hopes and dreams like flames shall burn
In the joy of vengeance and victory.
The stench of corpses in the air | Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah
I still smell corpses in the air
I still see death’s naked dance on the earth,
I still hear the anguished wails of the raped in my sleep…
Has this land forgotten that macabre night, that blood-soaked time?
The stench of corpses fills the air
Blood stains the earth.
They who, touching the forehead of this bloodstained earth, once puffed out their chests,
They who find the forbidden darkness in the throes of weary life,
Today, loving the lightless cage, remain awake in the abyss of night.
As if a virgin mother agonised, ashamed at a lost birth,
Independence – will this be a lost birth?
But the fruit of a fatherless mother’s shame?
The vulture of old has sunk its talons into the nation’s flag.
The stench of corpses in the air
Still, neon lit, within the swaying dancer’s body brews a storm of flesh.
Bloodstains on the earth –
Still, the bones of starving people collect in the silos.
Sleep eludes these eyes. Sleep eludes me all night –
In my sleep I hear the tormented wails of the raped,
Rotten corpses float like algae on the river,
The gruesome headless torso of a young girl chewed on by dogs
Appears within my eyes. I cannot sleep, I
Cannot sleep…
Wrapped in a shroud of blood – fed on by dogs, fed on by vultures
He was my brother, she was my mother, he was my beloved father.
Independence, thou are mine – my kin, lost and found again kin –
Independence – the priceless harvest bought with the blood of my dearest.
The sari of my raped sister my blood-soaked nation’s flag.
Where will we keep this corpse? | Shamsur Rahman
Where will we keep this corpse?
Where is a tomb thus worthy?
The earth, the mountains of it formed
Or the truest blue seawater –
None can contain it within their triviality!
Thus I leave not this corpse
On earth, mountain or in the sea,
I have granted it a place in my heart.
Guerrilla | Syed Shamsul Haque
Unending
South Vietnam
Cambodia
Bangladesh
In Angola
In Mozambique, you
Through the cosmos
Walk with alert, silent footsteps day and night while the villages
Are deserted, cracked attics and pantheons in fallen leaves
Covered uninterrupted within the sound of breathing
Your motion
As if you are our very own second
Coming of a Rabindranath
Song at the epicentre of everything
Voicing the mountains of sorrow
Of Africa, of Asia
You, a new tree in the cosmos
New tree, new flower
A new mizzen on the horizon
Patriarchy’s penance illustrated
Through exploding napalm
You walk on
Primed, alone
A brilliant cheetah amidst a deserted village.
A conversation in Kurukshetra | Abul Hasan
O Arjun, there is blood on my jowl, I knew
I cannot prevent the killings of children, of maidens!
Foeticide! Worse still, o Arjun, I knew
Humans want not to be born, their death constant, pervasive!
Blood on my navel – I knew, how I knew
I cannot stop this vexation of theirs, this madness
Of theirs I cannot stop.
Prevent famine and revolution I cannot,
Stop the theft of lavish rice from the silo I cannot,
I cannot cover mankind’s decline with relief cloth!
Ripe for marriage, Shefali’s neck calls out for lust’s red and poison,
Of starvation robbed are we of maidens, never maidens made,
O Arjun, I knew.
Brother refusing to go on the run, sister’s longing lost, I knew
The flower will not bloom, will not bloom, will bloom no more, flowers
Will never bloom again.
So will be murdered the singing birds nesting in bullet wood trees,
Throats, wings, of words constructed feathers
Thus shattered, I knew
The children of partridges and eagles alike rendered
Thus mad, begging, insane;
In the Indian festival of war we
But trade in arrows,
I knew, o Arjun – how I knew.
This valley of death is not my country | Nabarun Bhattacharya
The father who is afraid to identify his child’s body
Him I loathe –
The brother who remains shamelessly normal
Him I loathe –
The teacher, intellectual, poet, clerk
Who do not openly demand revenge for this murder
Them I loathe –
Eight corpses
Sprawled across the path of consciousness,
I am losing my mind;
Eight pairs of eyes wide open watch me in my sleep
I wake screaming
They call me to the field at odd hours, at all hours,
I will lose my mind,
Commit suicide,
Do whatever I please.
Now is the time to write poetry
In manifestoes, on walls, in stencil,
In a collage with one’s own blood, tears, bones,
Now can poetry be written
In severe pain, with tattered face,
In the face of terror – in the van’s flickering headlight,
Keeping a steady aim
Now can poetry be flung
At ’38 and whichsoever killers there are,
Now can poetry be read, denying everything.
The lock-up stone is in the freezer,
The light shaken by the hijacking of the autopsy,
In the courtroom run by the killer
In the school of false illiteracy
In the state apparatus of exploitation and terror
In the bosom of military-civilian authorities
Let the protest of poetry resonate
Let Bangladesh’s poets
Like Lorca be prepared
To be murdered, suffocating body disappeared, stitched together by the Sten gun’s bullet,
Let them be prepared;
With poetry’s countryside
To surround poetry’s city there is an urgent need.
This valley of death is not my country
This altar to executioners is not my country
This vast crematorium is not my country
This blood-drenched slaughterhouse is not my country
I will take, snatch back my country
To my bosom I will draw the fog moistened late afternoon and floating
Fireflies around the body or soaring in the mountains
Countless atoms of the heart, fairy tale, flower, woman, river,
Stars named after each martyr to my heart’s content,
In the shadow of the swaying wind and sun I will call upon the pond shaped like a fish’s eye
Love – from whom separated by lightyears have I been, untouched since birth –
He too shall I call to me on the day of revolution’s saturnalia.
Endless interrogation night and day, thousand-watt light shining in eyes
I reject –
Lain on blocks of ice, needles under the nails
I reject –
Hung by tied legs until blood drips from the nose
I reject –
Boot on the lips, body thoroughly wounded by burning spear
I reject –
Sharp whip cracked on back, alcohol poured into the bloodied wounds
I reject –
Electric shock to the naked body, perverted sexual torture
I reject –
Beaten to death, revolver to the skull held and shot
I reject –
Poetry acknowledges no obstacles,
Poetry is armed, poetry is free, poetry is fearless.
Look, Mayakovsky, Hikmet, Neruda, Arago, Eluard,
We have not allowed your poetry to be defeated.
Rather, an epic is being composed by the whole country
Every verse is being composed to the guerrilla rhythm.
Let the hordes roar!
Indigenous villages like coral islands
Indigo fields reddened by blood
Titash wounded by the poisonous foam of conch
Toxic, deadly, crushed by thirst,
Arjun’s bow-string sings, the sun is blinded
By sharp arrows fiercely flung –
Bhalla’s halberd by the side
Spears with every blink of the eye, paving the road to occupied chars
Blood-eyed tribal totems springing to the beat of the Madal
Seize gun, sickle and boundless courage:
So much courage that there is fear no more,
And a parade of cranes and toothed bulldozers
Working dynamo, turbine, lead and engine,
Solid diamond eyes in the landslide coaly methane darkness
Surprise steel hammer
Thousands of hands raised to the jute mill furnace’s sky –
No, I am not afraid;
The pale face of fear looks unfamiliar
When I know that death is nothing but love.
If I am murdered
I will spread as the flame of every lamp in Bengal
I cannot be destroyed –
I will return as the green shoots on the ground year after year
I cannot be destroyed –
I will be there in happiness, in sorrow, at child-births, at funerals
For as long as Bangladesh exists
For as long as people exist.
