Train
Journey
This train goes from Cambridge to London,
You don’t like English weather?
Wait just five minutes, there you’re,
The sun smiles—
The pearls of raindrops will be gone
Like the lost dreams.
Through the meadows through the roads
And the tunnels berry thickets.
Appear the bees for split second,
They don’t need the tickets to tend.
The train like the dreamy arrow goes on
and on.
It’s a nice day, isn’t it?
Have to grab a few snaps,
O, come on, gloomy again—
But shine the brook sing the birds,
Everything is in nice stance.
O, the mechanical caterpillar
You’ll ever remain that
To pass by the omnipotent land.
Will never spin and die to be a butterfly
To the eyes of Rossetti.
I wonder one hundred and fifty years ago
How the dear Wordsworth couldn’t stand
your birth!
To him the advent of yours remained
baleful always.
And you would assail to kill
The beauty of the alluring lake district.
His impassioned plea never changed,
His uncanny feelings demurred
The coexistence of you and us.
Then I look back and discover a passenger
In the throng named Stevenson
Who quite contrarily praised your speed
That evoked multiplicities en bloc.
Through the next transitory moment
Arrive the famous hatters
Moving running jumping along with the
balls,
This time they’re not the hat-makers but
matchmakers.
A little ahead of them lay the car
cemetery
Of the Vauxhall Motors.
To be honest here I long for other things:
The Wardown Park, the Chiltern Hills and
the River Lea,
For a moment my riverine childhood halts
me
And Luton takes me to Patenga.
Two old men get on Hitchin,
Accost and sit beside me
With the long coats imbued in speckles.
They present the apparent impression of
“Two dreadful-looking old men” of Orwell
But they remind me of my granddaddy.
I smell something moist something sedate,
In the wink of an eye jumped away the
black squirrels.
I know for sure you’re passing through
Letchworth the garden city.
If I would be lucky enough
I might experience the evincing of the
Muntjac deer of Hertfordshire.
The Radwell Meadows beckoned to me—
Maybe some other time,
I must get off at Liverpool.
As you near destiny yet Orwell
echoes:
To him you’re the “Gems of the future
England”.
To me you’re my friendly guide,
I can’t count how many times
You sheltered me in your room
The room that is temporary and eternal.
To
My Iranian Friend Jhila
Listen,
my Iranian friend,
Hafiz
Sadi Khayyam and Rumi
Were
born in your land.
Jhila,
you think for a moment,
Getting
out from the womb
They’re
beating up that very woman!
Once
while Rumi departed,
People
beset with grief—
Both
the Christians and the Jews wept.
Religions
exist, male remained male,
Today
the foetus is the killer of the womb
Losing
all senses in thirst of carnage.
Hairs’
black is the sign of grief,
Your
anger mixed in there—
But
that spreads the glow of shift!
Mohibul Aziz was born in Jessore, Bangladesh in 1962. He permanently lives in
Chattogram where he is a Professor of the department of Bengali Language and
Literature, University of Chittagong. He is the author of nearly sixty books of
various genres such as fiction, novel, essays and poems. All of the books are
in Bengali. Private Moments and Resurrection of a Reformist and The Memory-Struck Swan of Cambridge are
his three books of poetry published in English. His poems have been published
in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal and the Setu Bilingual Journal.
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