As soon as the cell is unlocked, a streak of sunlight sneaks into it:
Today you will come.
A vibration of happiness playfully spreads out in the cell. Even though the northern winds
blow, putting the shivers into my bones, I wash my hands and face
with cold water. I tell the sentry on duty,
You will come. Laughing, the sentry lights
my cigarette. He says, You can increase your hunger by walking on the veranda,
I’m sure delicious food will come from your home.
Look, everybody at first thinks of food.
I know there is a scarcity of food outside. Hungry people
are coming like crazy to cities. Newspapers
can’t help saying that this is beyond imagination.
After seeing the photographs of the corpses of famished children on streets,
I clasp hard the iron rods of my prison cell
many days.
Alas, Freedom, I wonder if we left everything else for good
only to set in place the kingdom of the famished.
And they have kept me in between guns and the court,
a place where human souls get shriveled in heat
so that I won’t be able to get back to my source.
But you know what source poets belong to. Within the very confinement of my cruel cell
I bring back the fountain of my own
the way we used to keep alive all the sources of our own
in hundreds of catastrophes.
Captives are waking up to the screeching of sparrows.
I enter a garden by getting off the veranda.
A tiny strip of the garden
where I get my slippers and pajamas wet with the water of soggy leaves
and pluck a bouquet of white and yellow flowers from the thicket of chrysanthemums.
Red dahlias call me by waving their heads in the wind.
Then I go to roses.
The roses of the prison, yet how fragrant they are!
My prison mates do not pluck flowers, never let others pluck them
but I make a bouquet of flowers for you.
It seems time stands still today. I shave my stubble. I browse
among books. On the other side of the wall the city is waking up.
The honking of vehicles and the ringing of rickshaw bells reach my ears.
Certainly the frying pans of meat are heating up at restaurants around Chowkbazar.
And the delicious broth is being served
on plates of poor customers.
No, there is a famine outside. Can people find food to eat?
Do the plates of daily workers fill up with the broth of bone-marrow?
Yet I wonder how many differences an enormous wall can bring in.
Ah, how birds fly at large. They get past the wall freely.
For the first time in life, I long for the good fortune of sparrows.
Now our city may have filled with beggars for sure.
All day is spent on taking control of beggars’ flow.
How many times I have told you, Look,
poverty can’t ever be alleviated by a morsel of charity.
Another system is needed for this, social justice also needed.
The roots of sorrows must be rooted out.
Oh, I wish you understood my views.
My beloved,
the sun has risen up with your sacred name today. And
spearheads of hot, crazy sunrays slip off the iron-rods of the prison.
From the other side of the wall is heard the clamor of people just awake,
those who stay up late and wake up before all,
those who push
move
strike
whirl
fly
burn
and move ahead with their clinched fists.
Those whose unmistakable river of sweat runs beneath civilization,
the river that never dries up. Listen to their clamor.
Convicts are waking up. In the next cell, there is the sound of coughing.
I have announced your name from cell to cell
and said that I’m going to meet you at twelve’o clock.
Being very glad about it, they sit up on their beds.
They all wish you brought some good news,
as if you were a newspaper! as if you were
the main headline of all newspapers in the morning today!
When the sun drags me into the mid-sky,
getting me to oscillate in its invisible rays,
you come.
Reaching the jail-gate, I see you sitting calm
with a tiffin carrier in front.
You start off smiling calmly, brightly.
No overt greetings are shared between us.
As soon as you sit on the visitor’s chair, you begin to serve me food.
Serving me a fish meat ball onto my plate, you inform me
of the news that they are arresting people yet again.
Hearing this, I nod my head.
While giving me a spoonful of cuttlefish broth, you bring your mouth to my ear,
That comrade is no more.
I nod my head. You say, Don’t worry.
We can endure all these. O God, give us strength.
Then we begin to look at each other.
Until the sound from the boots of the sentries on guard
stops in between us.
Translated from the Bengali by Sofiul Azam
