Absence Poem by Dalan Jahan

You are not merely a name
you are the long exhalation of seventeen crore souls
orange smoke lodged in the lungs of Bengal.
Dates burn with hunger
People stand, rainless
beneath the hanging calendar.
In your absence
birds have forgotten how to speak
rivers have lost their own children
Gazing at this sickened sky
the sea is writing birth certificates.
History unwraps its bundles of bandages
as if the wounds
are once again becoming a country
rising
into a nation.

Dalan Jahan
25 December 2025