Where shall I see sunlight gold
Where shall I touch caring hand of love?
In this wide world that place
Where shall I get from where
I shall see souls colorful and monochrome.
Don’t know where
Touching the blue Sari in eagle’s wings
Shall see rich moving games.
Shall see sweet spring rain pouring into flowering
river
In the eyes of young women?
Don’t know if I shall taste the heart splitting
Brackish taste of clotted blood from the
Ventricle
Vast sand flat in the eyes the deer
Swinging silver lines in forest and sea
Eyes of Siberian ducks
Cleaning pomfret fish and
Incarcerated in celluloid tape
With bamboo pole in hand in log-raft distracted
Yellow eyes of the boatman.
Naked bodies of people at ports after they lost their
kins
Picture of silver screen in slave’s eyes
Suddenly dance like the hair on the chest
Days of the forthcoming falls.
Don’t know if I shall find elsewhere
Such good days then.
Warmth Pain and Happiness
In the warmth of Pain and Happiness
What is there in life
From the depth of darkness like the eyes of a snake
Burns the day – when poverty in pristine soul
Solemnly sinks, winds of desperation
Green foliage turns yellow
On emerald carpet
Fall in profusion – silver grains
Turn gold in fragrant harvest season.
Husking lever raise ripples in sleek body wrapped in
Sari radiant
warm saline taste ushering new lives.
Cool touch outside the bounds of time, place and
person
Eternal eons resonates in the tide of lives shrouded
by memory
Hope, hopelessness and failure – evidence of success
becomes the jewels in the crown of time.
What really is there in life
Our lives are merely pack of straws and leaves
Swings in the silver moonlight
lullaby, farmer’s flute, songs of the ascetics
Chanting of Saints and Sadhus
Musical calls from the Mosque for prayer
Bells tolling in Mandir and Church
Film on the love-lore of Alomati and Ramzan
Poets secretly weaving webs of life
In the pouring season of Pain and Happiness.
ABM SALAHUDDIN is a poet and radio journalist from
Bangladesh who shares his time between Beijing and
Dhaka.
