Great is the congregation this day
Kazi Nazrul Islam
Great is the congregation this day on the Eidgah of Shaheeds !
In the world will prevail again the Islami dispensation indeed!
Turan and Iran. Hijaj and Egypt, India, Morocco and Iraq
All stand, hand in hand, in serried ranks this day!
Those who unconscious lay, buried in tears and sighs
Seek Firdaus this-day on rising from sleep
With the newer fervour of life!
You too come and join the great congregation,
forgetting worldly distraction.
Those who lay in prison, bereft of life, have risen to life again,
And rush to the field, sword in hand and bold in heart, to fight the battle!
Changed this day is the Decree of Fate,
And hence this call of Hope and Faith!
The mind
Farrukh Ahmad
My mind is like a whale in the approaching evening
That dives into the night’s sea;
Yet I hear that far-off sound
Imprisoned in the breast of this body.
The sun has wiped out the tinge of evening cloud from
the tired minaret,
No movement in the air
Not realizing that no rest until deep sleep in this black night.
Yet the tired and dejected nerve’s fatigued movement
Brings the dream of hectic speed,
Perhaps storm-signal is prevalent in tired April’s sky,
Perhaps millions of evil spirits encircling like night mare, Instantly
Thousands of thunders flash in the horizon of my mind.
I hear the call from the sky:
Your night of misfortune
Brightened or the free eastern horizon,
The old tree in your forest
Has now shed its worn-out bark.
That thought pervades my mind like wild fire,
April’s likely thunder-cloud
Springs up in the dejected crowd’s sea
And becomes a free bird in the morning.
Away on its wings in the sky, leaves the old plundered minaret,
Leaves the sky’s splendour of colour,
Leaves the border of the horizon,
Like the captive’s dream-
A free mind,
It’s my mind.
Translated by Abdur Rashid Khan
Nature
Al Mahmud
How far man has advanced!
Hypnotised by ceaseless shower
I am sitting on my own heels
even today.
While planting the tender paddy seedlings
into the soil, thick and soft like khir, I thought
the soil to be my beloved wife who
like a piece of boggy land, uncovers all her fertility
with her pleasant watery shyness.
Fields getting wet in rain.
I feel a hand soaked in water on my back.
And losing all the feeling-marks of sense
I’ve made my benumbed sight remain vigilant.
All day long it rains incessantly everywhere
like the spell of khona. Silently I observe
the water-snakes running after fishes
fleeing away beside the edge of fields;
the green grasshoppers leaping in fright on my arms.
It seems that the graph of fields tied with ridges
having the touch of rain’s fog has changed suddenly
in trance of my dreams by an unbelievable magicspell;
and the beautiful earth has been divided
in the shape of a triangle.
From that geometry
the flocks of fishes, birds, animals and human beings
come out successively
and surrounding my sensation, start eating
picking up the contradictory foods.
Translated by Sayeed Abubakar
Translator’s Note : Khir:. Porridge-like food, sweet and tasty. Khona: Astrological predictions.