Poems by- Aliza khatun

The Smile of Ripped Lips
Translated by : Haikal Hashmi

They move like ants in this neighborhood
And the scarcity follows them silently like shadows
Near haystack, under the shelf of cow dung cakes
The scarcity is sitting like mounds of termites
The scarcity gets into the wooden pillar,
lath of the thatched roof.
And scrape out the smashed life like weevils.

They don’t go to shopping mall riding elevators
They aren’t familiar with French fries, wonthon, Thai soup
They have no clue of the red wines in the birthday parties
Even they don’t keep any tab on the movement of-
scarcity around them. They don’t indulge in consultation-
with each other in the middle of the night.

They already have five-six children but many more to born
Still happiness prevail in their homes
With their splitting lips
On the face like honeycomb, they laugh
Attraction burns brightly in the blackened cavity of their eyes.

After struggling very hard during the day
The bones in their ribs become as taunt as strings of a violin
Yet they can play laughter’s musical notes on it
The peeping poor deprivation Ultimately leaves-
this neighborhood after getting no attention at all.

Towards The Path of Worship

Ultimately everyone returns to his loneliness
Ultimately everyone returns to his deprivation

The excesses of sycophantsare beyond description
But high ranking fat cursed vultures
Go back to their very personal alluring strategies
And the flattering increases in leaps and bounds.

The enclosure of red bricks around them
Spreads lovely fragrance!
In that red burnt bricks
Our sweat and blood is stacked neatly.

This burnt earth makes their bright walls
This soil and man squeeze themselves
To fill their colorful tumblers
But they don’t leave any manure in this earth
The plough of worship cannot touch the lump of the mud
Now this soil is turned critically ill.

Ambulance is a necessity here
This soil needs the nursing of manure-water and seeds
And to uproot the weed of flattering, some hoe is required
Only this urgent call can be given by an emergency unit.

Ultimately we come back to our scarcity
Ultimately bearing the agony of blood sucking cage
We look towards the path of worship
The rivers lying at theirdeath beds
Sticking thirst in their throats and
Searching the harvest friendly alluvial banks.