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Slicing off a piece from the body of the night,
And examining it from top to bottom, one may find
That the fearful darkness does not have its heart,
Backbone and sinew. It
does not even have the feelings
Of hardship in the stomach and liver, nor does it try to elicit
The past, digging for memories to put them
On its neck and then sits to cry like a human.
Spreading the dust on each and every cell of the century
The darkness smiles with its irritating, ugly teeth.
It tears off applied physics; setting its feet on math's
Head, shows its anger in the street.
It's violent, cruel, hypocrite-
Destroys the truthfulness with its poisonous act. Cutting its
Edge with the aid of a sharp blade, I finally have discovered that
The darkness also holds some light, love and dreams of future.
Translated from the Bengali by
the poet
HASSAN AL ABDULLAH is the
author of five books of poetry in Bengali, a novel, and a textbook
on Bengali rhetoric and prosody.
He is the editor of Shabdaguchha, a journal of Bengali
Poetry, published in New York.
He teaches high school mathematics for the NYC Board of
Education. His latest
book, Breath of Bengal, a bilingual edition, translated by Nazrul
Islam Naz--the first in a Bengali Poetry Series--was published in
2000 by Cross-Cultural Communications.
 
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