Great
and noble Twenty-First, the blood-dimmed
Twenty-First February.
Barefoot
processions and streams of people
On Dhaka streets ;
As
if a flash flood has swept all these youths here
Girls
with flowing hair and white sarees—
the young men
In
their fine shirts, sleeves rolled up.
A
black badge pinned to the left shoulder,
faces
sweating
From
a ritual fire.
From
a flower bedecked dais the poet shouts
his fiery words
The
revolutionary rhythm of words, phrases
and songs
Which,
like unreined horses of the sun, tear
through the air
Filling
the sky with echoes of drumming hooves
A
thousand hands raised in the hope to make the
impossible possible.
The
sun’s galleon drops its oars in the eastern sky.
Barely
two miles from Dhaka to the south lies
Bailapur ;
And
Jamir ; predictably unclad bare feet,
and empty-stomached
Couldn’t
even afford a few left-over morsels
from last nights’ meal
Puts
yoke on a pair of skeletal oxen.
Vacant,
nothing to do now. Nothing to do
yesterday, or tomorrow.
Yet
expecting the barren red soil, a gift of the
forefathers,
would
at last speak
lashed
by the angry iron of the plough.
And
Rahimuddi opens the shutters of his shop
and sweeps the dirt out.
Last
night the mice ate into his store of pulses.
The
executioner has no special dress, no family tree,
no
name, place or postal address. A bloated
smile plays on his lips
Displaying
in its ebb and flow
A
varied conflict of countless waves.
Geographic
landmarks are etched on the history
of the land and time.
Birth
on the gift of a moment, death of a
particular day,
The
neck waits under a raised blade, as languagee
Finds
similes under a guillotine,
And
courage and the integrity of wards ; and
An
honest trade in return.
But
in your effort to dig out a grave
And
hide Jamir’s remains in it, you have
forgotten the Twenty-First.
But
tell me, has the day forgotten you ?
Mohammd
Rafiq
(1943--)