‘The Reading’ and Other Poems by Abu Sufian
The Reading
What can someone do to her beloved?
What can a lover give to her mistress?
Pondering upon these thoughts
That peep in my mind before her arrival;
I have decided to read,
And expect her to be the best listener
And the most ardent reader in the world;
In the long run, we have become readers.
Poetry has become our language—expressions
Our love pours through Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet XVIII’
Composed four centuries ago;
Yet, those lines reignites our desires to be immortal
To keep our love inscribed in the history of time,
In the days, months, years, decades, centuries to come,
To engrave our longings in the evolution of seasons:
Falling Autumns, stunning Springs, soul-shaking Winters,
To carve our names in the deepest woods of Robert Frost,
Who was ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’.
We have delved into the sensuousness of Robert Browning,
‘To His Coy Mistress’ stimulates our urge to be united,
His immortal poem ‘Andrea del Sarto’ makes us feel
The value of an artist and art; the desperation of a lover.
It all began with ‘My Last Duchess’ though,
But it has not ended in the thrilling generosity
Of the ill-fated heart of an all-loving Duchess
In the hand of a cruel Duke.
We, together—hands in hand, witness the collapse
Of a great emperor, and the decay of his sculpture
In the eternal verses of ‘Ozymandias’—the Pharaoh,
Ornamentally written by Shelley.
We have seen the canvas in ‘The Shield of Achilles’,
And how Auden portrays the unlucky Achilles
Through the painting witnessed by his immortal mother.
‘Are you here to kill me?’
O my beloved!
‘Are you here to kill me?’
Go ahead! And make me believe that
This world is not real anymore,
Or this world is not real at all;
That we are here to fall
In one fine afternoon, or a delightful evening,
To wake up stumbling into the real world
Of things in forms, not in shapes,
Love adorning a divine nature, not a temporary feeling of physical urge.
‘Are you here to kill me?’
To help me wake up forever
To the realities I actually belong to,
Where pine wood doesn’t end,
Vine garden doesn’t rot at land,
Where flower orchid doesn’t let its splendor fade
And where love appears like an angel—
Ceaseless, imperishable, everlasting and immortal.
O my beloved!
‘Are you here to kill me?’
For I don’t belong here,
For I’m nothing but a stranded soul,
Waiting to die alone.
Our Alarms!
Bound by time and fate,
Our flight of love flourishes like a flower,
Our desires meet each other in a single encounter,
Our hearts scream louder,
—Louder than a senseless thunder.
Bound by time and fate,
Our love emerges like an infinite force,
Our souls mingle with the joy of freedom,
Our ears listen to the unrestricted words,
—Words that aren’t bound by laws,
—Words that aren’t censored by convention,
By a tech giant or a counsel.
Our words that grew wings to fly,
Going beyond the known cosmos,
Beyond the curtains of the galaxies.
Bound by time and fate,
We had to pause the flight,
To take a transitory moment of peace,
To trust each other with heart’s content,
To embrace a leap of faith in God
To scramble nature’s complex odd.
Yet, we had to stop for the Alarms!
Alarms brought us together to the departures,
Alarms remind us how time flies,
Alarms force us to accept ‘time exists’,
Alarms interrupt the intoxicating dreams,
Alarms intrude on our divinely serene sleeps,
Alarms intervene our unions,
Alarms trespass our privacy—our reasons.
Alas! It was our Alarms!
Alarms! Alarms! Alarms!
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চাষীর চোখে আজ জল!
চাষীর চোখে আজ জল! লক্ষ্মণ ভাণ্ডারী চাষীর চোখে আজ জল! পাঁচশো আর হাজার টাকার নোট হয়ে গেছে অচল। ঘরে
ভালো থেকো
ভালো থেকো ছোট্ট পাখি হলদে স্মৃতির শাঁখায় শাঁখায় ভালো থেকো মিষ্টি বিকেল পুরোনো সব বইয়ের পাতায় ভালো থেকো মুখো মুখী
মা তুমি
মা তুমি , রবি ঠাকুরের জ্ঞানের প্রতীক , লিখা কবিতা । মা তুমি , কাজী নজরুলের জ্ঞানের ভাণ্ডার , যা
