POETRY

July 18
 

Do you remember the sunset on the 18th of July? What colour was it?
Orange? Red? Violet perhaps? Or was it a simple hue of blue?
I have asked the birds for an answer; they say they didn't fly that day.
The thrashing movement of the copters, the buzzing sound of the flaps,
The smoke from the tear-gas has not let them fly in the sky.
So, when, in the pursuit of an answer, I ask the birds,
I get no reply.

Run

Myriads of legs marching. Hand in hand. Firework of slogans.
Broad daylight or silent night. Goons and guns.
Velocity of bullets. A broken skull. An unmoved body. A hasty run.
How many days shall it continue? How much more to run?
I have run a mile more with everyone else, and I shall keep running.
Unknowing of what to expect next, careless of what is coming.

One of them

Every now and then, I shift the curtains of my room and pretend
That I am not inside my house.
And that I have no proof of the thousands of murders committed,
That I have not seen with my two eyes how defeated
The children of my country are.
I pretend that I know no green and red flag
That has been reddened with the blood gushing from Mughdho's skull.
And I pretend to fool myself and play ignorant
To the hundreds more they enforcefully disappeared.
When I walk, I carry a smile I borrowed from an innocent child playing in a field,
Who equals me in not knowing anything.
But the heavens and oceans know, I know it all, I have known it all since the very beginning.
But when I tread on the corrupted streets, I tread defying my knowledge.
Because I am one of them. And I must survive.
 

Iftehaz Yeasir Iftee is a third year student at IBA, University of Dhaka.

PHOTO: ORCHID CHAKMA