Tears of the Sun (Poetry)

TEARS OF THE SUN

(Dedicated to my mother, Shamsunnahar Begum and father, Md. Nazrul Islam)

--Shahinur Islam

We who are Surviving

We, who are surviving, are walking

Along the path of the sharpened sword,

Where even slight movement causes

A river of blood.

In the darkness move about rats, mice and snakes;

Behind their movement we breathe, eat, sleep.

When we get caught! That fear stops

All the work, the life force of our potential.

Yet living means sowing the seed of the potential;

Rearing it despite the sense of scores of ruins of our existence.

Let Silence Break Down

Let silence break down in huge explosion

Let hate burst out in constant emission.

Out of love we’ll build the palace no more,

Out of love we’ll drink the venom of ruins,

Where remains only our restless silence,

Where do talk the dreams only to themselves.

He who is Beyond

When he goes to the limitless bank,

We can’t see him any longer.

Sometimes he peeps into our dreams,

But does not come in our warm talks.

He does not have contact any more

With the life enjoying pleasure alone

In forgetting all.

Does he keep contact still then?

Does he see us in his eyes of pity or love?

Though we forget him all,

We can’t wipe his memory.

So sometimes his tune plays on the sad strings.

The Distant Song

The star that fell from the Great Time tonight

Finds no place in the breast of earth even;

And seldom floats in memories as wind,

Then far, too far in the untouchable,

Unseen non-entity comes unified.

It comes to our dreams from time to time though,

It’s no longer visible in the world

Of catching, of touching, and of living.

Though occasionally in the known tune

Thousand pieces of music of the hour

Are played, it dies out in the stream of time

Gradually, completely, and for ever.

Running After

The heat of the outrageous sun

Of unbearable time piercing

Our body in unending, unchecked,

Great pain –we are to run after –

Always in time and out of time.

Some call then with the beacon of

Solace; some gaze in great wonder-

Some keep pace with it in their show.

If They Meet in Love

Along the vertical line of the sense

If a parallel line of feels is drawn

And if they meet in love,

In this life then, the sun-faded, ice-hard

Dot in disregard too finds some water;

The arrow-pierced egret as well can hear

The beckoning of life;

The match-stick left in disregard as well

Has a dream to be lit again;

And the grass too longs for living

Like an unyielding banyan tree.

Yet Music Arouses the Demon

Where do you come from to enhance

The cry of the flute in my heart?

To the invisible, infinite,

Undesired bank, you oft pull me.

Erect despair melts for nothing,

Unperceived thorns are visible

As if they were ever-vivid;

Yet music arouses the demon

In the budding seeds that get wet

As per the order in the juice

That was drained out of the dry soul.

Break the Silence

Friends, break the silence

Rusted around us over centuries.

Yes, friends, now is the time.

Break the pin-drop silence

In extreme roar.

Make it pin-pointed.

Break the sacrosanct silence

In utmost explosion.

Break the Holy Silence

In high-pitch tone

Break the rarified silence

In high timbre.

Break it, friends, to keep silent.

Break it to make them silent.

The Bashful Lust in the Looted Estuary

If bashful lust meets

With the looted estuary,

Let him do it thousand times;

O Mountain! You need not

Shield him with your head up.

I am afraid you can’t stand

The speed of the stream

You are jealous of.

Just leave it to him once

And see how he is as a boatman

In the deep water. 

Yet I Go On

Along the length of my silence,

When the senses walk ceaselessly

The glow-worms of the darkness too,

As it were, do talk to someone.

In the light of the distant lamps

That are about to stop burning,

I can mark out her no longer.

In the drowsy wind, all my feels

Continue running freezing cold;

Yet in the endless universe

I always restart my journey

With a ceaseless love towards life.

The Hunter

The seagull that is lost in hunting fish

In blue water, is hunted too by some hunter.

You disdain like popping

Of the puffed rice; yet you are too

Disdained again and again.

Then what game are you and I

Lost in all day and night?

Which cycle are we ever turning on?

When the nearest one disappears

In darkness, that sense arouses for a moment-

Then with the awakening of forgetfulness

We ourselves are forgotten all on a sudden.

Waiting for the Fossil

When the water of high tide goes down,

What do you explore there?

There lies the dead coral

That will but hurt your heart.

It is the fossil of what you explore,

At some unknown time its soul

Was handed over to this water-

The deep blue, apparently grave water.

Yet you are exploring?

Your heart will only be burnt by blood.

That soul will wake up no longer;

You will just bear the burning of light

In lieu of getting illumined.

In the Silence of the Forbidden Blue

In the silence of the forbidden blue,

When the heart is boiled

And ready as food,

O Eater! Even if you are hungry,

Why do you but feign

Not to devour it?

How do you satisfy your hunger then?

How do you fill up your ravenous mind?

Is there somewhere then

More and more serving

Of the very delicious food than this?

Not Ever-Burning, Nor Ever-Shimmering

When does the evening star shine?

When does the full moon rise?

Isn’t it when the sun admits his crime,

Submits himself by stooping down

And takes away weariness?

That uninterrupted stoop is never

Desired yet. May such cycle go on

Forever – not ever-burning,

Nor ever-shimmering.

There is Yet Another Truth

That time in the sky of Chanpai

There was a fair of evening glow;

To its own nests a flock of egrets

Was coming back, and I, getting

Stooped with the burden of darkness,

Was going on by sipping

The memory-invigorating nectar.

I knew the light would be seen about,

There wouldn’t be rule of darkness for ever.

This is cogent truth; there is yet another truth.

By the time will my blood run in my veins?

By the time will that light reach my retina?

By the time will my longings be worthwhile?

Or still then will I be there on the breast of earth?

Will I be in the life of love-separation-cry-smile?

Love of the Dove to the Hawk

Love is famous across the world

In the simile of the dove,

Oh! Yet it is never forgiven

By the hawk.

Opening the wings whenever

The dove longs for

Meeting his love,

In that distant sky

The hawk pounces on him

In the yearning for all ruins of his.

A Complaint

Wiping away all blue in the sky,

Absorbing all water from the river,

Oh, god of life! Where are you sitting

To see this cruelty?

This soul is like silt;

So the faint sun burns it.

You have made it in such a form

Why is it then stooped with

That burden of yours?

How Much Water the Clouds Lost

How much water the clouds lost

In quest of quiet, green peace!

Yet in all heart there is, as it were,

The incessant explosion of all ruins,

And in the yard of aspiration,

With

A pause

Death, as it were, keeps prowling.

How much path the sailor traveled

To reach surely the shore of life!

Oh! Yet at the end of the path

The serpents show their fangs,

And with

A pause

The spoiled past is, as it were,

Just the crushed specks. 

The Desire

Fie on you more than the devil!

Hate for you more than hate itself!

If it saps my soul, let it do.

I still wish in life truth would win

Falsehood; and the good would come back

To the dominion of evil.

I wish the soul would spread its wings

In its pleasure with no limit,

And the heart would drain out the things

That it deserves from the heartless.

Blood Trickles in Me

Blood trickles in me!

That too is in the abysmal depth

Of my heart; the shred of which is seen

In my eyes and face. Staying outside

How will you get it?

How will you gauze its depth

With your fragile fathometer?

In the Moonlight There Glides No More

In the moonlight there glides

No fragrance of her heart any more,

Her tears shed only dreams

And angry amour.

The pain that sets the lamp ablaze

Drives life with its light.

In the unknown music of known lyrics

She sings me some songs.

The heavenly star she longs

To shine with in the dark night,

In the worst fear of getting turned off,

Her soul keeps trembling with it.

Our Heart Still Cries

How much time has passed by it seems,

Of human civilisation!

Why is our heart still crying and crying?

Why is it still talking to the air?

Is its bliss only abstract expression?

Isn’t there any union of the heart

Of a man with the civilisation?

Without any union of the two hearts,

There happens only airy enjoyment?

The cacophony of discordant strings

Pleases the heart of the civilised now! 

Communion

All don’t have any communion

With all the life forms of the world.

If it does happen anyhow,

It’s just through use or enjoyment.

Nobody is yet to sever

The shackles of this sturdy rule.

Perhaps it’s inviolate as ever.

The painful heart accepts it still,

For we exist or live on them,

In such a use or enjoyment.

Eternity

We never enter Eternity,

Nor do we come from,

Yet we live in Eternity;

There exists our home.

For it begins not with death;

Rather death ends a phase

That begins with our birth;

And all our life do we gaze.

The Song of the Bended Morning

Riding the back of the bended morning,

We have to go again to the death bed

Of the sprawled twilight where varied colours

Play with one another for a moment,

And then fade away in the work-black dark.

Takshoks call too in the hair-drop silence,

The rustle of leaves too becomes distinct

Like the fretfulness enveloped in smiles,

Or like a sudden flash of a lit heart

Veiled in the forced darkness of Africa.

At first hour, we’ll feel creepy in terror,

Yet to wipe the weariness heaped all day,

That terror will be evaporated.

Oh Sisyphus! We’re still dripping with sweat

On stones like you making no flowers bloom.

As if we obeyed the law of some god.

Those who are Dead

The dead are happy;

The happy are dead.

They don’t long for their new birth or rebirth

Like the breathing men, like the unhappy.

They don’t have any strong lust to shred things,

To bow their head once and hold up always.

The dead are perfect;

The perfect are dead.

Their heart is content with desire of life.

No privation, no raggedness, no draught

Touches them like the flowers bloomed at dawn;

Their soul doesn’t grow like the eroding brooks.

They never build up anything with pain

Of the thorns, with pangs of the breaking down.

In the New Light of the New Path

If light is lost in light

Around the edges of the dark,

If the path is lost in a path

With a great love for it,

You and I will meet then

At that light and that path.

We’ll see new light being kindled

At the end of the path.

With that light in our eyes,

We will travel new lands.

When It is Time

Let the delayed dawn of the lazy night

Unfasten the arm-ties of life today.

Let the desired knot be severed today.

What though there was no longer embracing

With the leaves having fallen on the ground?

The dream that is asleep in heart of seeds

Will kindle the fire being its own ruin.

You will come across ashes all alone

Upon and down which there is nothing else.

Yet there will lie buried in their own midst

The diamond in seeming calm of neglect.

When it is the exact need of our time

It must radiate glows over again.

Yet It Appears That There are No Humans

There are humans inside and outside home,

In tea stalls, in meadows and in markets.

There are humans in all the four corners.

There is nothing but the humans alone;

Yet it appears that there are no humans.

There are humans in schools, in colleges

In offices, in courts, in cinemas.

There are humans all around these bodies.

There is nothing but the humans alone;

Yet it appears that there are no humans.

There are humans in roads, in streets, in lanes

In water, in land, in the sky as well.

There are humans here and there- everywhere.

There is nothing but the humans alone;

Yet it appears that there are no humans.

There’re humans in fairs, in sports, in meetings

In probhat pheri, in mangol jatra

There are humans and humans everywhere.

There is nothing but the humans alone;

Yet it appears that there are no humans.

There is everything else among humans;

There is no human alone in humans.

If there is any, no other man seems

To be there so as to understand him.

Metamorphosis

The vultures of Bangla have come back now

As if in the forms of fierce hyenas

To be gorged with the malnourished bodies

Of the living vulnerable people.

As snakes shed their skin and change their figures

And get stronger to gnaw human bodies,

Imbued with that strength they inject poison

Of death into the men of this Bangla.

This agony is too unbearable,

Yet we’ve to bear it as silent as fate,

For we’ve given them such appearances

In the time when they were but some of ours.

O who knew! They would change their character.

Do the metamorphosed hyenas then

Live in us all the time as helpless cubs?

Mending and Rending

The tears that down your cheeks roll

And the smiles that spring from your soul,

Strike me with the same stroke.

But the former rend me as an arrow pierced,

And the latter mend me as a tailor bird.

Pleural Effusion

When my tears rolled down

And surrounded my left lung,

People scorned, ‘It’s for puffing airy happiness’

‘Why didn’t you go down healthy meal?

Follow the rules of health.’

Some advised, being anxious.

I simply said, ‘They don’t cause it

Nor is the food to blame even

Though they worsen.

It’s all my disgust oozing

From the means of livelihood.

Finding no dustbin even

It excreted in its own living room.’

My Pain is Not in My sorrow

My pain is not in my sorrow!

Sorrow? She’s the prolonged shadow

Of my happiness that with her

Lives if its light is set ablaze.

I feel pain when I’ve to bury

My own life, and live other’s life;

When I’ve to borrow other heart

And go on loving ceaselessly.

When my known mynah keeps looking

At me as that scarecrow oft does.

When my heart is served as the food

For foxes, dogs and cobra snakes.

I feel pain at that very hour;

I do feel pain in nothing else.

Our Life is Not So Long

Our life is not so long as to right wrongs

Of everything; so many wrongs are there

Left to pierce us as needles in our life.

Right or wrong – that remains still mystified

Like death or life, as if it’s ever pierced

With arrows of philoshopical thoughts.

Yet what we know as wrong –whatever we know

In the light of our wisdom we do not long

To spend time or to forgo our pleasure

So as to make all the wrongs corrected.

All our time is spent on the does of dreams,

Where is the time to correct all our wrongs?

So such a hope of ours too is decayed

As we will get everything in a life.

All lives will be blessed with the thing alike;

That will also never, ever come true.

From a View Close to Closer

The twinkling galaxies shining alike

Are not the same. Even all the flowers

Of the same colour in the same garden

Are not alike. A flock of flying birds

Are never alike. The people wearing

The same uniform are not alike too.

All of them look alike from a distance,

From a view close to closer they appear

Dissimilar to more dissimilar.

They can’t be known without knowing the space.

Or else we’ve to give back for our wrong sum;

Or else it lives with us like a shadow

And gorges our heart as a pierced needle.

The Sensible and the Insensible

If one is more sensible

Than the senses,

The senseless world

Knows him as if

He were very insensible.

The Gift of Civilization

Sitting down on the fleshy thighs,

What the uncivilized deeds is

The world carrying out all over?

The leftovers eaters wield power

And decide the fate of people.

The body-livers who built up

The civilization as if

They themselves were bruised and wounded

With the pointed edge of their tools,

They were fossils of some museum.

Civilization! Is it then

Only the luxury of clothes

That are woven with words alone?

And the sad songs of fallen leaves

During the hard winter season?

Does it kindle the light of hope

Only as fire shows in our homes

And is turned off over again

Fading in the black hole of time?

And it sucks all the blood of ours

In that silent and quiet darkness! 

  

We Alone Hang About in Our Station

In the spectacular journey of time,

Our bustle is heard just in our station.

Isn’t there any hustle anywhere then?

Or we can’t hear that hustle and bustle,

Or their sweet music, or their hectic life

With our audible or indistinct ears?

We still look like being stationary!

The earth has gone away –far, far away

Taking us with her; yet in our great zeal

We haven’t enquired after it anyway.

Perhaps much more has the earth been evolved;

We alone hang about in our station

With age-old, yellow fairy tales of ours.

The Earth

I bear betrayal of my bones

From the time unknown.

I see my children

Tear all of my veins;

I see them breathe

With my air,

Yet they make it dirty

Under my nose.

I hear the tune

Taught to them;

Yet they taunt me

With that whistle.

I am abused with

The tongue they are

Given by myself.

Thus I give and they take

And deny, and keep betraying.

Tears of the Sun

I burn in tears more than

In fire where I do live.

I am happy

As nine daughters of mine

Still dance around me in awe

And happier as one of them

Gave to me many a gift of grandkids

While others couldn’t.

But one of my little ones

Is so disobedient a piece

As to kill slowly all the rest.

And this still moves me

To tears all the time.

A Full-fledged You

In the dark background

An inkling foregrounds.

I followed it

And found it lying like a creeper

Trying to go up and settle,

Thus get grown enough

To live and spread.

I gave it a candid shot

Setting in the rim light

That separated it from its origin.

Then I went to the dark room

To develop and print.

What I got was a full-fledged you.

Sprout Roots as Banyans

Go on up

Live alone,

All alone

As you go up and up.

Go on down

Live trampled,

All trampled

As you go down and down.

Stay where you’re

And sprout roots as banyans.

Hope has Wings

Hope has wings;

So it sings

And does fly

Amid clouds,

Amid shrouds

Of much cry.

But when they

Break anyway

And can’t fly

In the air;

That’s despair

Where hopes sigh,

Still cling to

Life and do

Have a try.

This goes on

Till soul’s gone

To the sky.

  

But Time is Ripe

The river that cleans

The heart of the earth

Becomes black

Before being ever-dry.

And we are squashed, smashed

As an amusing ball.

Flogged and scourged

With the sticks made from

Our own bones;

Yet never can we cry.        

But time is ripe

You’ll die of blackness.

And no ball will be there

To amuse you.

All our bones verging

On your fist, then,

Will ever sap you

And make you a burning fry.

Truth versus Falsehood

Falsehood we love more

As it colours us,

And lulls us to sleep

Beyond  the thorny world.

And truth we hate more

As it often stings us,

And shows our real face.

We just build and live in

The palace of falsehood,

But always feign to love truth.

You Howl Again

You howl again and growl

And shred false vanity.

All business of falsehood,

All deceptions around

Lying in the velvet –

You blow them out this time.

Each man is bearing wrong

And blows on streets today;

All’re busy abusing

And beating each other.

You pound them with your guts.

In the Golden Days of My Dreams

In the golden days of my dreams she didn’t

Let me live in the fold of my last song.

In the mad indifferent wind she didn’t

Let me sing out in the midst of the spring.

In the crowd of hundreds of words of heart,

As if words died crying too bitterly.

In the gloomy glance of my eyes she didn’t

Ever let me tell anything to her.

Only did she remain busy in work.

When a raging thirst came over my mind,

She just went away indifferently.

In the noon when rain was falling she didn’t

Ever let me get soaked in the shower.

So my eyes began to be filled with tears.

You Passed Time Happily

Where did you come from and to?

O Mind, you didn’t know it yet.

Where you will go again

Does anybody ever know?

Millions of years passed by

During your travel of the universe.

You forgot it like a goldfish

And passed time happily.

That you are engrossed in happiness

Of forgetfulness, is just the dream of sorrow.

Why did you play like this forgoing great life?

If you don’t know before and after,

You’ll go on crying all your life.

You just don’t leave this and that banks

Of coming and going.

You

You don’t know how much

Shadhona you’re for me.

Don’t you accept that

You’re the desire for light

In my life of darkness?

The blossoms that open

In branches, are but

Hundreds of sleepless nights

Of the tree, and are

Silent longings of thousand hours.

Don’t you know that?

The flute that plays tune

Becomes sweet after much cry,

Which is the cry of heart

Without any tears.

Don’t you hear it?

All That You See, Oh Mind

All that you see, oh Mind,

Is a show of forgetfulness.

What’s the need of so many things

In so small a life of yours?

Life is such water,

That’s useless in no bodies.

It exists as in the sea

As in the speckles.

In this life, just link them.

You just got lost in pleasure,

And made your soul a desert.

If you traced the the real form,

This form of yours would be faded.

To retain the real form

Just resign this life to it.

We are Humans!

We are humans!

We are humans!

We awake to life

When it is lost.

Who lost in love

Of whom we love?

To find out him

We fly balloons

Of our psyche.

We kill father

And worship him,

Thrust the burden

Of all our sins.

At end we laugh

And keep showing

Our fake macho.

When we are dressed

In colours too,

We hide real hue.

We please our mind

In fake colours,

In many shades.

Yet All Deaths are Not Equal

Our soul bursts with the death of elephants,

But laughs heartily about that of ants.

Though they do feel the same pang in their deaths,

As equal we do not perceive all deaths.

The former tear the air with their loud cry,

And crying their heart out the latter die

In the very death bed of their own rooms.

The mere gulf between the two in bulk booms,

Although out of death the pang alike plumes.