Poems of Ashraful Kabir

The Palanquin

Nowadays my sleep vanishes very often
An empty palanquin comes very close to me
In the subconscious mind,
Just only wants to get away –
The shadowy-face arouses that old intoxication
Being angry, gets drunk right behind.

I try to find out the curiosity of the peeping face
Try to overcome the ambiguity
At length, I harmonize with the bearers –
Hun-huna-hun, hun-huna-hun, hun-huna-hun
The fascinated thoughts are multiplied
All the swelling dreams are stumbled.

I talk to dry dust;
Build a relationship with spear-grass
The emotions are all twisted
Branches of thoughts try to spread, but I
Understand their limitation of availability.

I go back to sleep, and
Get fascinated by the new curves,
Think about the depressed-feelings
To the creepy chance of interaction,
The bearers leave me, my dreamy life!

Eventually the obsession breaks down;
The palanquin gets lost in the far away village
And the waiting palanquin door closes slowly

Maple leaf
Open the window on a wintry morning
And delete all the imaginary draft-images from your mind
It is needless now to draw all the cuteness
To cover the whole page and dilly dally
Needless to make a tune of Beethoven.

Choose a new page
Use all the new color pencils if needed;
Apply all the techniques that once you learned
Don’t worry; new images will fill up the gap
In combination with the old harmonies
Just to wait!

Change the shell in the spring to the seasonal excuse
Go to a new path in search of a new forest
Complete your course once hankered after
And spend the life drinking it to the lees.

Amid the Maple-wrapped gray street –
Just give a regular footprint quietly
Spend a few moments more with the falling leaves;
And with the touch of flattened-papyrus-bark
Repay all the debts of negligence.

Ashraful Kabir is a poet, translator and literary critic.
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