Three Poems by Mohibul Aziz

 

Wonderful Poetry of Life

 

I stopped at Wimpole Street, 

It’s not a street, a historical gallery rather. 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at number two, 

Sir Thomas Roe, Queen Victoria’s physician 

At number ten. 

Paul McCartney at 57, 

This is where Lennon and Paul sang: 

“I want to hold your hand!” 

Do you remember James and Maria  

Of Jane Austen’s `Mansfield Park’! 

Well, I think of Virginia Woolf, 

When boredom crept in  

She would run down Wimpole Street. 

I smell medicine, Laudanum 

From two hundred years ago. 

A lady sits on the porch  

Of the Royal Society of Medicine 

With pains in the head and spine 

With inflammation of the pharynx. 

Her sharp cough shook the air, 

Blood came out and splattered on the balcony. 

A man like an angel of peace  

Came and stood beside her— 

Says in a calm voice: 

I’m Robert, will take you to Italy, 

Together we’ll save the poetry of life!

 

 

Popping into the Rupert Brooke Café

 

The silvery Cam-tape flows through the heart of the Granta, 

The swans amass in the afternoon conference 

Ignoring the punting swarmed with the tourists. 

The fragrance of smashing the coffee beans 

The smell of the Assamese or the Kenyan tea  

And the effervescent bear mugs all welcome 

Our onerous visit to the poet Rupert Brooke. 

Yes it’s him the handsomest English poet who untimely died  

With a great urge of joining the war. 

Dear Rupert, when I think of you  

Strange things creep to my mind: 

Evading all sorts of enigmatic enmities how could one die  

Of a mere mosquito bite! 

Your death could put on hold nothing  

Yet people died in the wars of the world, 

The Tahitian girl gave up all hopes of return  

After a prolonged chapter of waiting. 

But I know the English poetry faced  

The wound of hemorrhage from your undue exit. 

The time of departure arrives, 

I go my way Rupert too comes along with me, 

Someday surely I’d recollect you the handsome poet. 

The bugles of war blow on leaving a never ending refrain, 

The instantaneous agony of death crawl into the poetic lines of him, 

The nearby church-bells proclaim the imminence of the eve 

That sounds like the knell of the guns in Rupert’s land.

 

 

I Just Freaked Out

 

Kill them 

Hold it, hide, hide 

Catch him, run, run 

Beat them 

That’s the parrot of my neighbour 

When I heard that  

For the first time  

I just freaked out 

But now I’m used to it 

I well know even if it’s  

Out of the cage and unchained  

Can’t make it 

Because the bird is only a bird 

Not human.

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, 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 and elsewhere.