On the Run

Like a fugitive on the run
I pursue my life
in fear and trepidation,
frightened of others
but fearing myself the most.
The moment my faith died
a monstrous demon of terror
was born
who chases after me
night and day.

It smears my dreams
with abandoned and forgotten
images of frustration.
It perpetually prods at
and peers into my feelings
at all those concealed thoughts
their hideous hidden treasure.
When my conscience knocks it down
and wrestles it to the ground,
I'm exhausted as a mummy
locked for centuries
in a sarcophagus.

But the pain of life
keeps pulling me back—
like a newborn infant
the picture of affection,
like the shadow of caravans
turning toward home at evening,
like the fervor of two loving arms.
Impelled by terror
I draw back into myself.
I see that heartless monster
standing there
clutching a summons.
Cackling with scorn it informs me—
It's all a hoax, it's all a fraud.
Once again I'm absconding,
a fugitive on the run.



Traveler Who Missed the Moment

I.
The train arrives at the platform.
At that point I'm outside the station
pushing through an immense crowd,
trying with all my might to make my way inside.
The ticket I clutch is priceless
and soaked with my sweat.
As if I had suddenly spotted a long-
sought criminal right in front
of me-I make a desperate push
to capture that train.
With handcuffs at the ready, I struggle
impossibly to catch that thief
almost within my reach.
Like a fugitive on the run
the train taunts me, playing
hide and seek, vanishing and reappearing
off and on among the crowd.
With the crowd pressing in on every side
against me, my heart's in my throat.
I can't move forward.
Then in a flash right in front of me
the train vanishes.
When I finally stumble onto the platform
I've missed the train.


II.
And sometimes it's like this—
I'm standing right on the edge
of a steep precipice.
The force of the light breeze
makes my body tremble like a paper
windmill in a child's hand. When I gaze
into the abyss of empty darkness far below
my heart thunders in my chest
with a tremendous terror.
Still I have a sharp urge
to yank out all the trash
from inside my skull, or like a sawdust-
stuffed rag doll, roll my body
like an empty glass bottle
down the slope of the hill.

The splintery sound of broken glass
goes on piercing my brain.
From the empty hill-caves below
like the alluring glow of son et lumiere
in the darkness red, blue, yellow pinwheels of light
keep pulling me relentlessly, with
an attraction stronger than gravity.

But like the little mermaid
near the seashore in Copenhagen,
like a strange stony weight in the midst of salt water
I sit immobile, nude
and the tourists nibble
at me with their eyes.



Dead Fish

No, there's nothing leftover
and nothing remains.
What was going is gone.
The past is like a decaying ilish-fish
whose tail is sticking out of
your pocket. Seeking the source of the stench
passers by look this way and that.
No matter how fast you walk, trying to hide your shame
you cannot hide it,
people make fun of you.

So I did a smart thing,
I mounted the fish in an attractive frame
and hung it up
over the head of my bed.
Seeing it, people say
"Wow! What a terrific fish!
Where did you get it?"
With my sweetest little laugh I say —"Ah, yes!"
Then I gild its silver scales
with the most silver-plated of fairy tales.



Separation

Flakes of snow in the air
the sun has closed its door early
everyone crowds into the drinking spots
the robber December is invading.

The breath from your lips warms
my frozen earlobes.
I'm shivering under your coat.

The Number Thirty bus is on its way
but we wish it weren't coming.

In your chest I can hear
the vibration of your heart's breaking chords,
your fingers
wrap around my fingers
like gloves.
"Can you stay a little longer?
Just a little?"
Those eyes of yours
are a lake of passion, their waves drench me.
"I would love to."

The Number Thirty bus is a death warrant.
Commuters busy getting on and off,
I put a foot on the bus step
and like a kite with a cut string
I drift inside the cave of the bus.

The moist touch of your farewell kiss
on my cheek makes me shiver,
you're running on the sidewalk
waving your hand, "See you tomorrow!"
Through the window my eyes
hold you as long as they can.
Your figure shrinks to a speck
and vanishes from sight.
I'm alone inside the cave of the bus.

The warmth of fireworks' color
is on my lips, cheeks, ears,
every part of my body, and inside.
"See you tomorrow!"

That robber December pounds on the outside
of the bus window and slips away.



Afternoon at the Coffee House

This coffee house is quite well known,
well known is its fragrant air.
I've spent many afternoons here
face to face with you.
Today I sit alone
with a cup of bitter coffee.
People all around me
—it's a Starbucks of course—
but still, you and I were alone here,
just you and I.
Eternal blue afternoon slanting in the heaven of our eyes
with a cup of bitter coffee.

This coffee house is quite well known,
the idle afternoon quite comfy.
A pair of lovers sipping coffee
holding hands, gazing into each other's eyes,
                        an intoxicating gaze,
exchanging, now and then, light kisses.
Fragrant air is deepening with
steamy Amaretto, French Roast, and Colombian,
the afternoon's unending pleasure spreads
but you are not here, I'm alone
with a cup of bitter coffee.

Sometimes it feels as if
you've come and sat beside me,
your lips have lightly brushed
my cheek and forehead,
your warm breath has heated my being.
Startled, I see there's no one—
this afternoon is only a luxury of expectation.
Waiting moments that make honey
of a cup of bitter coffee.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

November, 2009

Poems

Dilara Hashem translated by Carolyne Wright

Dilara Hashem was born in Kolkata (Calcutta) and moved with her family to Dhaka in 1947, when India was partitioned and many Bengali Muslims moved to East Pakistan. After her marriage, she moved to Karachi, West Pakistan, where she wrote, produced programs and worked as an announcer for Radio Pakistan, and also performed and recorded as a singer on radio. The 1971 War of Liberation brought her and her family back to the newly democratic nation of Bangladesh, but in 1975 the president of the new nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated along with most of his family. The Hashem family moved first to London and then to the U. S., where Dilara continued to write and publish, as well as working as an announcer and producer with the Voice of America's Bangla Service in Washington, DC. A recipient of the prestigious Bangla Academy Award in 1976, she is internationally recognized as a prolific author of some 30 novels; collections of short stories; a popular autobiography; and more recently, film and play scripts produced in Bangladesh for television, radio, and theater in Bangladesh; as well as two books of poetry. Her debut novel was made into a feature film in Bangladesh and also translated into Chinese and Russian. Other recent literary awards include the Anyanya Award in 1996, the Sarojini Naidu Gold Medal, and the Alakta Gold Medal from Bangladesh for lifetime achievement. She met Carolyne Wright in Dhaka in early 1990, when Wright was translating Bangladeshi women poets and writers on a Fulbright Senior Research Grant, and has worked with her in ensuing years to translate poems and short stories. In these translations, Hashem's poems have appeared in Catamaran, Cimarron Review, Vallum, and Wright's anthology of translations, Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women (White Pine Press, 2008). Dilara Hashem currently lives in northern Virginia, writing, working for the VOA, and traveling to Dhaka, where she continues to contribute actively to literary publishing as one of Bangladesh's most renowned and best-selling authors.

Carolyne Wright spent four years on Indo-U. S. Subcommission and Fulbright Senior Research fellowships in Kolkata, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, collecting and translating the work of Bengali women poets and writers for an anthology in progress, A Bouquet of Roses on the Burning Ground. For these translations, Wright has received a Witter Bynner Foundation Grant, an NEA Grant in Translation, and a residency fellowship from the Santa Fe Art Institute; as well as a fellowship from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, and research associate posts at Harvard, Wellesley, and Emory, where she also taught courses on South Asian Literature. Volumes published so far include Another Spring, Darkness: Selected Poems of Anuradha Mahapatra (Calyx Books), a renowned West Bengali poet about whom Adrienne Rich has written, "across culture and language we are encountering a great world poet." Another published collection is The Game in Reverse: Poems of Taslima Nasrin (George Braziller), the dissident Bangladeshi writer living in exile with a price on her head. Most recently published is Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women (White Pine Press, 2008).
Wright has published eight books and chapbooks of poetry, including A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2006), finalist for the Idaho Prize and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and winner of the 2007 Independent Book Publishers Bronze Award. A poem of hers appears in The Best American Poetry 2009, ed. David Wagoner (guest editor); and she has also received a 2009 Pushcart Prize. She was on the Board of Directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) for 2004-2008. A visiting professor at colleges, universities and writers' conferences around the country, as well as Translation Editor for Artful Dodge, Wright returned in 2005 to write and teach in her native Seattle. She is on the faculty of the Whidbey Writers' Workshop MFA Program, and in 2009-2010 is also teaching at Mount Olive College in North Carolina.