Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

It is odd that nowadays One seldom hears the words

Tell me what to say when I need to speak, If I have to say something, So what can I say: look at that

Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred

I remember the wallowing hole inside of my chest, / hollow and bleeding

Once, I believed there was a crown on my head. The heart was brimming with life and light Brimming with boundless force to surpass any spread. Among the crowd, I was always one

The pavements are hotter in winter, the rain never wets the asphalt and I never tell you to do anything else other than “be”. 

And along with our bodies, the rage keeps on, / we chafe and bleed and clot and steer; / we go mad and nude

And in spite of knowing this/ In spite of the absurdity of it all/ You let yourself fall

Veering off from stories for a bit, Fahim Anzoom Rumman’s “The Secret” was a breath of fresh air. The piece seemed to be a cross between a poem and the kind of fable your grandparents would tell you as a kid to get you to fall asleep.

Ask me not of Grief. For I have been burnt by its friendly fire with blood and bits of oozing mortal flesh spun flaky and ashen by its biting cold breath.

that single spot, shunyo, a hole that is filled to its circumference, I drive and the sun is bigger than I’ve ever seen and orange, look directly into it or, i had to write a poem to go along with the first

While I fear whom you’ll become once you hear me, once you leave me.

Perhaps father was never taught to love.

The trust you gain takes time. 

from my blood fangs, disarrayed cold / looting my sore body / that has done so much for me, while I ached

I wonder where God sits in that tower. I wonder whose cries are louder.

From moon beamed mountains  To plains deltaic; In Diasporas–detached 

This poem has been translated by the author from Zahir Raihan’s poem, ‘Kotogulo Kukurer Artonad’ on account of the novelist, writer and filmmaker’s birth anniversary.

The burst of fragrant marigolds on the blanched porch of our old Calcutta home, free like sand, unbridled like the wind