A Collection of Poetry by Shamim Azad

A Collection of Poetry by Shamim Azad

The Fruit Woman
(Inspired by Salvador Dali’s Running Plum Man)

Tell me woman-
how you hold such fantastic fruits
On your lips, in your hands, in finger tips
On your backbones?

Do you hang them
on the hangers of your body
dry in the sun and store
for rainy days for your family
so, they can sustain their crisis, restore
their energy and won’t have to go
door to door?

I think you have a hidden harvest
prickly, spiky and blunt
which come out
When men are in trouble and
When they want.

Some of your fruits have texture of anger
A ravishing spicy smell
with a special power for ignition
but only few people can tell.
And when they know it
they raise their eyebrows
and think, it is outrageous and odd
an anomaly in ‘their’ house.

Woman, you are running with fruits
without proper clothes and boots-
in bare hands, half fed, in empty stomach.
But you continue, produce.

Your fruits are your busy breasts
filled with the juice of life inside.
Your curious brain has fruits of fire and flame.
Woman, why don’t you confide!
—
Published in British Bangladeshi Poetry
An Anthology
By Agami Prakashoni

Plaka’s Perfume

The bottle is transparent.
The liquid looks like milk.
I recognise it, and you would
like the purest silk.

The language on the of label was unfamiliar,
so was the look of the bottle.
But it tastes sweet and fantastic
and feels like thirst-smoother-
a little dense and mystic.

But this Greek milk is so similar
to that of British cows or Bangladeshi Gavi*
or other cows from wherever.
With that discovery in mind
The song I find-

“নানান বরণ গাভীরে ভাই
একই বরণ দুধ
জগত ভ্রমিয়া দেখি
একই মায়ের পুত,
সবাই একই মায়ের পুত।“*

The cows and their creed
may be different in places,
But the colour of their milk
is the same, regardless.

That is why
I love the people of Plaka,
their perfume and the poets.
I enjoy the taste of organic eggs,
and the blood-red juicy pomegranates.
—-
*Gavi is cow in Bengali
The Bengali extract is from Fakir Lalon Shah -a Baul poet from the 17th century Bengal.
A Poets’ Agora
Athens

Consent

I wake up in the middle of a humid Athenian night
as the notes of a Greek ballad fade
from under an ancient Sycamore tree
While the sun and her flowers sleep
While day’s consequences gradually grip people’s mind at night-
I wake from sleep to a dreadful dream
I wake to an era that I only read in history
I wake with the raging roar of fascists raping Greece
I hear the whispers of poets past-
passed from this neoclassical building of 1801
I hear their silent words under a thousand layers of anxiety
I hear people fighting back fearlessly
I hear their noises of resistance and
cheers at at an ultimate victory.

As I open my eyes in my bed,
I meet two huge and heavy rectangular grey shutters
they don’t shut back, rather open gasping at me.

I tread tenderly on the wooden floor
I place my weight softly on their footmarks
to keep from erasing the inscriptions, the music
I barely burden them with my responsibility to reincarnation.

And yet, they give me a positive push from below,
from the dark basement
They give me affirmation to tell their stories,
rebuild their untold words for restoration!

A Poets’ Agora, Athens

Amber Acropolis

I sensed the afternoon would be
damp, humid and thirsty.
Then all on a sudden
at the dreamlike drumming noise of thunder
I sprang from my writing table.
I rushed through the white French doors,
out to the marbled Byzantine balcony.
The shower soaked me like syrup.
It felt like I am in the April showers, in London.
It was warm, interesting and curious.

I looked at the distance to check
how this gusty gale and downpour were
falling on the mountains, monuments, markets and
top of the majestic Acropolis.

No, it wasn’t storming and raging like the Junta,
But rather’- showering them with love and affection.

When it stopped,
the tears of relief
rolled down the flat footpath
downhill
stone to stone
and stopped at the doorsteps of my
poetic residence in Mnisikleous.

Everything was awash with amber!

Down there,
where the heavy marbled gate is,
the purple Bougainvillea shrugged off
the last few dead and dry leaves,
still hanging in neglect.

Plaka, Athens
A Poets Agora

Pardon me

People say, forgiveness is a divine virtue
It puts you in a higher place than
the criminal, the sinner.
Lenity will make you move on
The density of the dark memory
can fade away and will become thinner.

But just the thought of the matter
to consider
before even making an effort
my horrific memory appears like a fresh wound
My fear feels like fire.
I see those breathless stairs,
smell the horrific odour,
hear the unbearable sound,
I feel the rapists’ faces are just over there!
Fifty years old liberation struggle
becomes alive, vivid and clear.
Which is why
I choose not to pardon them ever.

Context: During the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, thousands of girls and women were tortured and raped for months by Pakistani Army.
Sing Silver Tongue

Altab Ali

He cooks tea leaves with loads of sugar,
he loves watching wrestling with his mates at the Albert Hall,
lightings at Christmas in Trafalgar Square.
On snowy days he listens to Baul songs on an old tape recorder,
cooks curry with finely chopped onion and fresh coriander.

Altab Ali, an ordinary Bangladeshi factory labour,
works in a bleak Hanbury Street basement,
producing coats of leather.
He came across the seven seas and thirteen rivers,
to make a fortune for his family who still remain
by the mighty Monu Gang, his childhood roaring river.

His bendy Bibi was a great storyteller.
‘People can be loved and respected regardless who they are’,
said his grandmother.
So he thought anyone can make his home in an unknown city
as long as one doesn’t hold animosity against another.

The diversity of the market people, at east London’s Petticoat Lane
give him the similar feeling and he feels he is not an anomaly, an intruder.

On Sundays, he finishes his regular chores and wears
his moth-ball smelling jungle-printed shirt
that is better than the Sami & Salimi’s on Brick Lane,
compared to that sent by his sister from Sylhet – Zindabazar.
He can just wash it by hand with cold water
hang it next to the burning radiator
wear it without ironing the lovely half sleeves made of polyester.

He was fearless and perhaps a little bit careless
and never thought people could simply murder
just because you are different from them, dissimilar.
He never feared dark places and white faces,
so when he was stopped by his attacker,
he dropped his tiffin carrier,
swallowed piercing punches and cried for a rescuer.

Before his sky got saffron red and a serious quiver
he desperately wished to see his loved ones,
his childhood Monu Gang river,
like any ordinary man would do;
but no one came to interfere.
So the crushed sycamore on the grass of St May’s
consumed his blood for ever,
he became an extraordinary news item for a BBC reporter.

Ma*

At the beginning
When her need felt most intuitively
I was too young to understand
the connectivity with any kind of objectivity.
Ironically, when she is no more
I understand quite implicitly.
‘That was my mother the unsurpassed person
I could always rely on
For my true security.

Actually, a mother-child bond
is invisible and indissoluble.
It does not matter how old they are
the correlation can get stretched at times
may even at longest length.
It comes back to its original shape.

As days gone past
It becomes evident,
how important my mum was to me.

Ma* – Mother in Bengali

Being

Life can look like
a bundle of mingled yarn
tightly tangled and inseparable
When you look at life
from close by sitting
from rear.
But the same old life
can look like a slackly bind bundle of
individual threads
when you can distant yourself
from there.

Year of the Artist Award 2000

Shakespeare’s Funeral

To bury or not bury the bard’s complete works,
“To be or not to be”
is no more a question me.
His works a wise lumbering elephant
weighing me down
as I push him up translation steps
I can’t imbibe this multifarious mountain no more!
His greedy words like a swarm of mosquitoes
have sucked my blood, worn me out
lets bury it all, have fish and chips, go home and have my life back.
It was not like this at the start-
In Jamalpur behind the old public library
near the concrete steps down to the river
my meandering mind first found a Bengali
synonym of one of your expressions, dear Bard !
The sky was green, the air was light and I was fourteen
wearing a fluffy frock I sat with you and heard you speak to me.
The silver waterway looked like a bedspread,
a throw where I could stretch out-
I uttered effortlessly as Rishi Valmiki
voiced his first poetry
coming out of a cave in Ramayana
I translated Mauritanian Moor’s desire as kamona!
Then read you in prison in 24 hours isolation
trod with you hand in hand.
I realised you were good for business and power-
I understood why Mohammed Ali was compared
as a Shakespeare in the boxing ring,
Nelson Mandela lasted 27 years in prison
valiant as one who has tested death once,
and Charlie Chaplin wanted to play Hamlet!
Nevertheless
I was petrified of you and still I am
when I dress you up in Bengali attire
swap your doublet for a darun sherwani
your ruff for a rongeen urna
your jerkin for a joriwala jama
I shiver and worry if I am losing your
semantic ambiguousness
or have exhausted it, burn the texture.
Even when my words are rendering the sky like arrows
your words work like your witches in Macbeth
who say one thing with one word
when they mean the other,
which is more often than not,
leads to more murders.
Your intricate English makes me feel
what I lost between your words
and mine, were you!
As the days going past and I am growing older
I feel the challenge in my bones
the trauma and tension of translation in my hair roots
I hear the shaky noise of each vertebra
and you consume my calm.
Let’s start the process of burning his complete works
before we step into 401!
While he did not speak a word in 400 years
we the translators all over world
spoke more than he ever thought we would.
Let’s think about what kind seeds should we plant on his grave
that will grow in the future
into lands of myths, with roads paved with milk and honey
not dry with hate and hunger and full of swamps
for there is no such thing as blind hatred.
We can remember him well
pause him at how I felt at fourteen
in a fluffy dress by the river Brommhoputro and wonder.

Credit: Bards Without Borders

Authentic Seed

When the storm was growing furiously tall
The lantern was swinging
Showing all the hidden cobwebs,
And we were taking refuge
Under an old dangly unsightly wooden table
Of a corrugated tin-shed
My mother’s shaky hand
Pressed me a seed into my hand
And whispered, “carry on my mother’s trail”
Whom I knew as a garlanded woman from Mokka
That shined in the dark
On her cane skin knitted prayer mat
In the full tide
Like cats eyes,
Like a brown girls sparkly teeth.

The seed was merely visible
on my deed dark skin.
But I felt the warmth.
I tried to smell it
Smash it
And to throw it.
But she did not let me do anything.
“Wait until you become a woman.” She said.

Before we were blown
By the merciless gale
And implanted in various lands:
Lands of myths,
That of
Roads paved with gold
Milk and honey
Frosty and cold
Swampy and marshy
Rocky and sold
I heard my grandmother was
Piercing the threatening noise of the storm
By crying out Arabic Ayat
I felt two wise women gripping my hands
And their voices telling me,
Almost competing the whistling wind:
How to recognise an unknown city
How you find your space as nomads
How to spot the harvest season
How to blow husks from seeds
How to make rafts out of banana trunks
How to survive by swimming
resting on coconuts in floods
And how to carry on and on and on
The essence of a real authentic seed.

Add-ons

Everyone is at the risk of discrimination,
financial loss or destitution.
Things are getting worse
People are worried about all sort of displacements.
Even a coward and a skinny man
suddenly can make a strong attack on you!
Anyone and everyone can be
apprehensive of conflict and war,
fear for dying of thirst and hunger
wherever you are.
The loss of wealth, suffering of separation
is normal in this unfair world.

But if you are a woman
you have inevitable trauma
for your personal insecurity
simply because of your body.

Sing Silver Tongue

Copyright@Shamim Azad

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