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Volume 2 Issue 1 | January 2007

Inside

 
 

Original Forum Editorial

Month in Review: Bangladesh
Month in Review: International
Who will provide the political base for reform?-- Rehman Sobhan
Breathing space for a new party?-- Farid Bakht
February 1969: Revisiting the Agartala Conspiracy Case -- Syed Badrul Ahsan
The Fakhruddin government:
No easy option
-- Rounaq Jahan
Our window on the world -- Rafiq Hasan
Bangladesh 2006: A human rights audit -- Hameeda Hossain
Photo Feature
Cautionary tales from Rangoon -- Larry Jagan
Has regime change boomeranged? -- M Shahid Alam
The question of poverty reduction in Pakistan -- Akmal Hussain
Why Mahmud can't be a pilot -- Naeem Mohaiemen
Banished to a better life? -- Maria Chaudhuri
The evolution of monotheism-- Zeeshan Hasan
Late Said -- Fakrul Alam
The women in his life -- Rubaiyat Hossain

 

Forum Home

 

Poverty

Kazi Nazrul Islam

Poverty, you've empowered me,
Endowed me with Christ's dignity
And adorned me with a thorny crown,
Ascetic one, you've inspired me
To speak out and eye the world boldly
Deliver messages as incisively as a knife;
Your curse has made my veena a sword!

Arrogant hermit, your scorching flame
Has shorn my golden visage of its glitter,
Shrinking its sap and drying the soul early,
When I try grasping with emaciated hands
Beauty's bounty, O Impoverished One,
You step forward and lap it up.
A forlorn desert is all you leave
For my imagination to play with.
My eyes blaze at my own beauty!

My desires, tinged with pain-yellow buds,
Would rather bloom like the soft-white
Fragrant shefali flower. But Cruel One,
Like an unfeeling woodcutter, you break
All branches and destroy all blossoms,
My heart glistens like an autumnal dawn,
Wet with dew shed by sympathetic earth.
You are the sun, your heat dries up
Every dewdrop of pity. I shrink
Inside the shade that earth affords.
Dreams of Beauty and the Good shatter.
Pouring liquid poison down the throat
You ask: "What good is nectar now?
There is no parching sensation,
No intoxication, no madness.
Weakling that you are, not for you
To seek manna from heaven
In this sorrow-laden world!
You are a serpent, in birth singed
By pain! In a thorny garden you weave
Garlands. On your forehead
I leave this mark of woe!"

I sing songs, weave garlands, and feel my throat burn,
Snakebites have left their marks all over my body!

(Abridged)
Translation: Fakrul Alam

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