(Nirmalendu Goon, born on 21 June 1945, in Kasban village, Barhatta Upazila, Netrokona District, is a modern Bangladeshi poet who is known for his artistic excellence in composing poems on various themes. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 2001 and Independence Day Award by the Government of Bangladesh in 2016. He was also awarded the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1982. He has been writing since 1965 and emerged as a successful composer.)
Elegy for Hasan
They are not beloveds; those who call by names are the crickets,
It is better to be aware of their acquaintance, be it little;
Hardly were the words uttered, the insects splitting apart their chests showed you
Inside you are anxiously reading out `Duino Elegies’
How do you compose within the grave? Is soil the paper, khata?
With love, the lamp of life is brightened up, now take it,
You are an eternal star and bedeck me in the dark
Again in the mother’s womb; angel, you tell me, is beloved mother?
These are the crickets, are they gods or birds,
Ousted, uprooted salvation, of youth, in which pot would I keep?
Both virtues and vices are found in this world, more than these are lives.
I am here, you are absent—thus we are two existing in two directions
Withdrawn; so you are mundane women in the belief of poets,
Devoting love, the woman whom I touch retires into a foreign land for long…
The Field of a Tremendous Brawl
I have drawn a field of a tremendous brawl in the design of imagination.
All brides and grooms are face to face locked in war day and night,
All are warring souls inside, unrestrained and highly valorous.
Here are as if easy targets of piercing arrows, spears and clubs,
Dishonour, hatred and always intense insultation in newer way.
In such an outside civil war—all are tolerable in homestead surroundings.
Outside ceaseless love, perennial eulogy
Like creepers it entwines others as animals are habituated;
So, love, thirst, continuous happiness as in live-together.
There is no denying the truth, yet there is this alternative life
Throughout the ages, man creates in arts and crafts like truth.
Though turbulent waves, the devising of hatred deep inside.
None will sacrifice for anyone the minutest grain of happiness.
Only the self-defeated soldiers draw bliss out of the homestead brawl.
The Grace of her Breasts
I made a travel to America encaging in eyes her breasts’ elegance.
Seas, chain of hills, woody forests sky and hanging array of clouds
With their peerless beauty these touched my eyes in this air route repeatedly.
The moonbeam-bathed Boeing after its sky-union landed at Singapore
To disgorge the Air-hostesses having full-blossomed buttocks,
Then on the shore of the Pacific, Narita and at last on Los Angeles.
The man-created beauty in clusters of high-rise towers has raised its head
Across the world famous cities in a competition with nature.
Their smooth highways have amazed the speedy thrill of heart.
More graceful that these, I have beheld a female body in a night club,
I have viewed her self-nourished buxom boobs sparkling like the moon
Coming out of a patch of cloud, from under the Dollars.
Yet, what a wonder! I could not efface for a single moment
The image of those graceful full-blossomed breasts from my eyes.
Gazi Abdulla-hel Baqui is a bi-lingual poet, researcher and an educator.
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