Two Poems by Mohibul Aziz

 

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.