Poems of Lutful Hossain
Bangladesh
Hyenas in khakis have stopped
Olive tanks have come to a standstill
Fighters not flying in the sky today
No noise of bombs exploding anywhere
Casual sounds of gunfire are missing.
On the third consecutive day of curfew
‘Swadhin Bangla Betar’ yesterday
Convoked Niazi to surrender.
Motionless morning of December sixteenth.
Stilly time crawls in waiting for the unknown,
Casual louds of war days fled to unknown
With the light spreading wings through dawn,
Thoughts have taken root in the house of anxiety,
Suddenly the speculation came to an end –
Streets started getting loud
With the high pitch slogans of the crowd.
When the clock strolled from ten to eleven –
Not fear but the joy of loud victory
Chanting the slogans – ‘Joy Bangla’
Started shaking the town,
All roads in the city turned fast flowing rivers,
Waves of people kept flowing like tide
Destined to Ramna Racecourse in delight.
Where the magician addressed the sea of people
With a loud call of the liberation struggle,
In the spread of that same green –
Crowd running again after March seven.
Nine months apart –
Three million martyrs
Tearful sacrifice of two hundred thousand mothers and sisters
Crossing the sea of abandonment and mourning
Winner today is the struggle
Of every freedom and right deprived people
Pouring from all around the capital –
Peasants, workers, students, young and old
Fearless Freedom Fighters
Daring and bold heading to the capital.
Emotion overflowing their chest
Shapla-Shaluk Shimul-Palash blooming best
Trigger-friendly fingers melting brightest rose,
Heartbroken grief-grossed in innumerable petals
Memories of loss woven in thousand stories
Mourning for the loved ones lost;
Heroes crossed the devastated roads
Burnt houses, crops, towns, and ports
Mass graves of the horrible countless martyrs.
Daredevil protesters with courage filled souls
Unwavering morale rooted in their fists,
Strived tough fed or fast – stormy like the sun,
Playing life in the moods of the trumpet
People brave and indomitable
Who stopped the junta devil
A nasty brutal trained regular force, evil.
The young who lost his brother
The old who lost all his sons
Brother who lost his sister
Man, who lost his wife and mother
Woman who lost family and everything,
Mother who sacrificed her special child to
save couple of freedom fighters in her shelter;
All marched to the arena, where –
their long-cherished victory to independence
Unfolded the record event of a surrender –
Of those who teared them into tears,
who made their life worth nothing to live for
except witnessing the coveted defeat
of the devil who took everything off their life.
And all those departed souls relieved
in peace from their martyrdom, smiled.
They walked proudly on the ground blood soaked
Thriving through the land, rivers or sky;
Hoisting the flag of an independent nation –
Blood red in the middle of a greenery,
Kept humanity flying high
In the hands of those
Who fought for rights
Etching a new name on the globe
Sparking bright and fresh with hope –
‘Bangladesh’.
Lonely Lighthouse
Maybe on that island
On the stony ground
Piercing through vast shadows of the sky
Whatever life left awake
Was nothing but an ambitious lighthouse
At the end of a long spiral road
Awaken from the wilderness
Cloud- bound with a desire to reach the sky
In the expansion of its border
A house of bare brick walls
Surrounded by a thin strip of stony courtyard
The keeper lived with his small family
Bundled in a twittering solitaire
On the chest of his beloved wife
Lighthouse keeper’s daughter
Foreworn after dolls play
In the salty air all day
Meeting mermaids in her fleeting dreams
Sakes in shiver every night
With the trumping horn of a ghost ship
When across the tiny habitat
Unexplored sighs were all there
To save the sailor’s life
The lighthouse shines on the summit
With the safety light to save lives
Weaving the thread of darkness
Wearied life beneath that
Mockingly whistles to songs of pain
Life’s auspicious number matching spree
Lives to the rhythm of the ocean waves
Leaving a maniac’s laughter in the air
Author & translator:
Lutful Hossain Born and raised on the banks of the Meghna. Secondary and Higher Secondary from Faujdarhat Cadet College. Graduation and Masters in Economics from Dhaka University. Businessman by profession. Poet by passion. Writes prose and also does translations. Literary editor of renowned portal ‘bangalianaa’. Publisher of littlemag ‘Anindya’. Team leader of the publishing house ‘Rochoita’.
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