Daud Haider’s Poems

Daud Haider
Art & Literature, Poetry
English
Daud Haider’s Poems

[ Translated from Bengali by Swati Ghosh ]

 

Sharing Death In Fury

I pierced falling leaves with screams
You simply dramatised them
A little before evening, at sundown

The sky vanished among droopy clouds
Nor was freedom anywhere over the horizon
But still you pour the fury of sharing death
Into homes
Into nightless nights

The saw grinds
It’s music in the cherry orchard

(2)
Of course that doesn’t mean
Prisoners are on their way home
Or they are about to be freed;
Those who strained ears to catch the home hub
At refugee camps
Anger drums up their thunderous music

(3)
I pierced day-waves with sun and surf
With screams I pierced the falling leaves
You dramatised them in a death dance
In dungeons of the self-reproaching city
The horizon rolls in lonely wails of the free land

 

Romantic

A Jewish girl of four and twenty
Makes it clear
How light and shadow intertwined
Are simply confrontation
So beware –
Her blue veil shivers
Unsure of existential thoughts
What does one do with scornful neighbours
“Birds ignore boundaries
But does it mean home and abroad.
Will merge for you?
Plus, in Palestine you are not supposed to cling to home,”
She says
Plucks a couplet from an old Hebrew verse

And then throws herself into a blazing pyre
She, a romantic, much like the bristling kadam.

 

Think, Bloodseeds

Where are you heading for, my country?

Think
Everyday a nightmare
Everyday a slaughterhouse
Everyday a bloodied Jallianwallabag

Think
Freedom adorning the king’s head is surrounded by Rajakars
Think
You arrange flowers around a decomposed corpse

Think
You dig your own grave
Think
This is, after all, your own Bangladesh

Think,
Where is the country heading for?

(2)
When roots push the ashwatha up
Would you stop it by chanting mantras?
Would you justify democracy thus?
Ah ha Rangila
The goddess whom 1 saw once
Dolled up in skulls and bones
Flowing away
Flowing beyond the horizon everyday

 

(3)

Who tears up our vocal chord?

Who will play Bhairabi, beside the Forat?

An everyday celebration of death
How to save yourself in silence?

(4)
The sun still shines in our hands holdings the flag
In our soil and stones bloom pollens of blood
All our moments are still in hiding
Our courtyards are replicas of Kurushetra
A thousand doors open in every room of ours

(5)
Morning rises out of the soil’s ribs
Lightning gnaws at the horizon
Waves of blazing heat

The backdrop is a-flicker
Think
Will bloodseeds erase people’s voice
Altogether?

 

Daud Haider. Exile poet. Haider was born in 21 February 1952 at Dohar of Pabna district, Bangladesh. He is an atheist. He is a Bangladeshi poet who was forced into exile after writing a poem that insulted religion including Islam. American Center,...

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