Translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam
RAIN - 1 It’s raining abroad now, in countries close by or far away. Occasionally a cold wind from some other land blows this way This summer evening brings with it sadness and beauty Blowing this way from some distant land! A cold, cold wind keeps blowing Slowly stirring desire, fomenting longing For alien rituals on such an evening. In the distance, in a riverbank ruled by beauty In another land, wonderfully wet in the rain, Lightning flashes time and again Stirring desire for one’s lover steadily Inevitably, on such an evening! Towards my homeland The cold wind keeps blowing O my alien lover Where could you be staying? RAIN - 2 It’s raining Over distant lands Over Brahma’s world, Over Rangpur and Bogra’s vast expanse In alluvial plains, The rain veils Burma’s evening fields And keeps streaming down. And below these lightning flashes, At the rain-formed night’s third quarter Radiant races Spring up at home or abroad Like hyperactive frogs leaping Into the unknown. Provoked by thunder and lightning’s violent outbursts, Allured by their promises, In the thick veil And swirling stream, In the darkness of the wet wind, In the eastern expanse, Underneath the sky In vast and empty fields Under the vast spread-out arum fields of the east, Incredibly, unformed new nations emerge -- Innumerable unsteady chaotic nations, Restless, perturbed, incapable of standing up, Lending themselves to grotesque maps, Forming unstable, quivering, permeable boundaries Governed by ill-defined laws and dwarf impotent ombudsmen And armies marching past unimpressively, They spring for no good reason And seem destined to be doomed. The night draws to a close. The rain too appears spent. When day’s first light breaks out, Those nations that would thrive and grow And glow with innumerable rituals and fast-spreading religions Feel their bodies disintegrating and disappearing Under the vast spread-out arum fields of the east. *Rangpur, Bogra— Two small cities in the northern part of Bangladesh
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).
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International
Borderless 