SEVEN POEMS BY ASAD CHOWDHURY

A Brief Doze

And, then, rushed in,
the dream of correction and compensation,
with pomp and splendour.

No stir of consent, though, in creepers of unknown trees –
Thank God, a pale moon rose,
A pleasant, refreshing slice of moon,
Calling up the forest into view.

– Translated by Masud Mahmood


Perspiring

Cursing my enemies, I say,
The past was vast and long in size,
The future a bit lank by comparison,
Slightly pale, and smaller in bulk as well.

The scope of work has shrunk,
A good reason for lazing around –
No matter how grey the nearer past,
The nearer it snuggles up in a wily way.

I've no desire for new stones,
Yet roaming peaks and caves and beaches goes on.
Just because I'm lucky, something comes along
In return for the old bouquet of flowers, though.

You'd hear the echo of the future
In life, in dream, in memory
Apathetic to judgement, patient and forgiving –
Yet, alas, your body sweats your mendicancy.

– Translated by Masud Mahmood


Émigré

Not self-exiled,
The émigré is a little piqued.
Letters pile up slowly
And lists of orders from home
Are strewn feathers of swans –
Still he kisses the lips of the moon
Still, alas, his lips burn on.

He tenderly takes his secrets out
From the bright shirts of clouds
And then murmurs cryptic mantras
Over his cherished secrets alone.
When he is a little drunk and undone
He sees Bangladesh at every turn.

Not a deportee by choice,
The émigré is really piqued.
Else why should he ask,
Why I'm a wandering alien, then?

– Translated by Masud Mahmood


Dream-wall

Dreams have no doors nor walls
They wander like open skies,
White birds
flying
circling
In the deep blue sky.

Some raise charming walls in dreams
Wishing to snatch away dreams
Desiring to cover them up in dresses
Clumsy and awkward like camels –
This is their ambition.
Only poets can hear
The lament for power.
Are dreams, then, some hopeless expectations
Shut up within walls?

– Translated by Masud Mahmood


Wrong Map In Hand

Has the stone broken?
So what.
The heart is broken.
Let it be.
Yet I’ve got the vast sky
And a wide window of my own.

The inhaler in pocket,
I still relish
The pranks of the wind.

The wrong map in hand,
I’ve passed my days and nights,
Living unseemly, wandering aimlessly,
My starving midday rolling into the afternoon.

So many pass through life,
Like a cakewalk.
So many unworthies go past.
Yet, like you, Lalan,
I sit here in neglect for ever.

– Translated by Masud Mahmood


Key West

Perhaps the delicate handiwork
Of earth, air, sun and water
Or maybe watercolour–
Smoky memories of cheroots in clouds –
The key to the west is fondly made
Of hard-working men and women’s sweat and dream.
Boys and girls or youth, if you please,
Knocked not at sunset’s but night’s secret chamber,
Morning sunlight filled up the wine decanter .

– Translated by Masud Mahmood


Hope

Am I stone sunk in eternal slumber?
Stone wakes up, the first water thrust
Of endless effusion in wondrous shiver.

From the depths of refreshing memory,
In musical, fragrant glory, I wake up. Maybe
Someday someone will come to wake me up silently.

– Translated by Masud Mahmood

City in Rain

Hangings of water beads,

Rain dunks the city in gouache,

Pasty, like wet taffeta

Leeching after a deep-water bath.

The arrogant skyline turns a blunt edge

Buildings undress their concealed ugliness.

Trees and leaves with a break from dust

Retire to brood on their rootless roots

Like sages expectantly waiting for grace.
Streets slush into spluttering pulps:
rickshaws, pushcarts, cars, vans and humans
Scurry and slither in a water-tight rush.

Streets are a complex of conveyor belts

Delivering their merchandise at their appointed place.

At a cross-roads

The stampeding traffic under knockabout parasols

Mobs it and runs into each other's angry throats

Like inevitable fish bones swallowed in haste.

The solitary crow on the cornice a dampened voice,

On his own today in his drooping dress,

Abandoned by his flock with nothing near to scavenge

Sits musing and prospecting a distant grubby business

A hearty meal garnished with sewage and seepage.

The sky is a porous amorph, a huge spider hanging low

Swelling and teeming

To swoop down on the city below

And crunch all in a consuming hold.

Memory Rain

The wind is beaded with rain

Like the flutter of a handkerchief against the face

Bringing to you the lover’s pain.

You love it

For you love the lover’s pain

Some moist gray face from dim distant time

Swims into memory like an obsolescent refrain

And you get wet, and yourself an aching substance.

The Problem of Number

Three of us sat together,
Chatting and laughing.
We felt a kind of rift developing,
Showing, opening up
A fissure in our cohesion.

Two against one, a little amused;
One against two, a little aggressive.
A pair of glances against a lonely one
Wayfaring, lost and pregerine
Looking for a mate in equal desperation.

A third in relationship is always troublesome,
We thought together.
The loner thought,
Perhaps there should be
One, two, four, or how about more!

A Sculpture of Our Time

"Crazy," said she,
"Do you mean me?"
A dark mood came over the two.

Eyelids slid down
Like fine silk of milk
Over her watery convexities
Like the curtain fall on a parting scene.

Eyelids rose like folded drapery
Such as was carved on classical stone
Such as Rodin had done his kiss
To bring life and bliss to lifeless stone.

Their sharp words like fine chisel cuts
Chipped away the veneer of the overspent words
Showing now the true image of love.

My Wardrobe and Utensil

While reading Derrida

Shards and shreds

are my puzzler mind,

Tears and tatters

are my body’s rind.

Shards and shreds

are my cups of mesh for milk..

Tears and tatters

weave my fabric of holes for wholes.

Ask me to pour tea

in the pieced-up cup

There it runs out

spoiling my trousers and shirt.

When I put my body

in my Sunday best

It undresses me rather

leaking my nakedness.