Kazi Mazed Nawaz

Solitary Corner of the Evening

Our home, the abode of sunshine and moonlight,

Used to guard all our secrets
In a solitary corner of the evening.
I have lost that solitary corner,
As I have lost my dear sensitive young sister.

Now, that calmness and solitude is missing,
Even so late in the evening.

I search so desperately all day long,
Go on haunting all over the country,
And see─
Nowhere does that eternal shade of the green prevail,
Where my sister could have hide herself
And shed tears alone in solitude.

So, dazzling painful light all─ around!
Searching eyes of the light
Pierce the secrets of darkness all the time─

But where is my sister?

O my light! Dazzling, sight-snatching painful light,
I get entrapped in my own light-
There’s nowhere to hide myself,

Nowhere to search my sister.
I mumble to myself─
Can our mind hear, as the wall does?

Daughter of the Light

The house that is plunged in darkness,
Is still awake,
And by its side has passed,
A path like daughter of the light.
Once, this path bathed in the sun
Reverberated with chirping of birds,
But now it’s mid-night that reigns supreme here.

Sleep overcomes both sides of the road
All through the night─

The daughter of the light gazes at the sky,
It’s the morning of her birth-day
Today is the first autumn of her life

Shattering the particles of sunrays, the deception of clouds,
We are out on this enlightened path
The sky on the way disintegrates into an immense azure pattern.

The path touches the closest garden of stars,
Woven with blue ‘Muslin’ fabrics.
A picked up unique lunar-day
Of the daughter of light,
Enshrouds all of us.

A few of us have lost our path homeward and back─

A silent, so silent eye is approaching,
Closely in touch with the sparkling blue of the sky,
And just a bit below silently, so silently bloomed─
Bunches of sky-blue flowers,
And the stay awake lighthouse of the daughter of light.

Translated by Kazi Wadud Nawaz

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