HOMA-BIRD
Once I fall, how much must I drop down before I can rise up again?
As this thought crosses my mind, I am reminded of the Homa-bird found high in the sky. It even lays its eggs there. The eggs then fall down. But because the bird lives so high in the sky its eggs take ages to fall. Its chicks hatch even as the eggs descend. And then it’s time for the chicks to fall. As they begin to fall the chicks sprout eyes and feathers and wings. And one day they discover that they are falling down and down. It is then that they begin to fly to their mothers high up in the sky. They fly so high now that they emerge as specks scattered all along the spread-out body of the sky
We are of the breed of these birds. We procreate, raise children; we drop down and rise up again!
[Homapakhi; Translated by Fakrul Alam]
GONE WHO KNOWS WHERE
An unending queue of children flowed forward
Going who knows where?
With great difficulty, I spotted my own child there.
But when I tried kissing him
I ended up kissing someone else’s child!
And then I lost him— lost him forever!
Dazed, distressed— I seem doomed to a lifetime of waiting.
[Aggato Uddesh; Translated by Fakrul Alam]
REJECTION
Abruptly today a baby is expelled from its mother’s breasts.
Though it keeps gravitating towards her— hopefully—
It continues to be rejected. Startled, it still keeps trying....
How can the innocent baby make sense of such evictions?
It can comprehend nothing— neither the implications
Nor the reasons behind its mother’s bizarre actions.
All it can do is wonder— is mother playing with it?
Or is she just being cruel, suddenly unmotherly,
Distracted by the sudden heat wave of the season?
The baby broods, all alone, helpless. And then once again
It turns towards its mother, only for another round of rejection...
Now inconsolable, it breaks out into tears, feeling hurt
And rejected, sobbing endlessly till sleep silences it...
Only its craving for love keeps striking one’s ears
Its magnitude scattering here, there, everywhere!
[Protyakhyan; Translated by Fakrul Alam]
Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a Bengali poet and writer. He has, authored nine volumes of poetry and three volumes of prose and fiction. His poems and fictions (in translation) have appeared in journals including Asiatic, Contemporary Literary Horizon, Six Seasons Review, Kaurab, 3c World Fiction, Ragazine.cc, Nebo: A literary Journal, Last Bench, Urhalpul, Tower Journal, Muse Poetry, Word Machine, and anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., NY/London); Contemporary Literary Horizon Anthology,Bucharest; Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace (Global Fraternity of Poets); and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh(Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, New Delhi). Two volumes of his poems have been published as translations, Poems of Masud Khan(English), Antivirus Publications, UK, and Carnival Time and Other Poems (English and Spanish), Bibliotheca Universalis, Romania. Born and brought up in Bangladesh, Masud Khan lives in Canada and teaches at a college in Toronto.
Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).
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