Sofiul Azam Poems

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Poets my ancestors in Charyapada
talked a dialect that I myself don't know;
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At every sunset
when cars in the metropolis
run -
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1.

I'm afraid fears often creep into you like splinters
as you hear him once again - drunk, bumping
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(for Moshref Jahan)

After talks of how she became
a mother at last, ever smiling since then
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for Babitha Marina Justine

I say Smile even though I know the art you are sacrificing your life for can't be used as a shield against gunfire in battle-fields of invaded lands or as a shell-proof bunker the kind you saw in war documentaries across the world or even as the last hand raised up against the Capitalist invasion into the old brain. I know all the raised hands are falling like a tower and I look at the sunny side of the fact that you would delight in sending missiles of hope one after another into the ruins running thick over centuries. You may harbour the scenes of flesh and skulls strewn on every path you take but I request you all, 'Please don't, don't ever forget to smile for a single second.'
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1.

It's raining, once again like before, in torrents.
I remember you as much in my dreams
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I'm afraid promises burst as a child's balloons
on barbed-wires, not that smooth like bubbles
do on Grandpa's backyard mud-pool. Nothing's
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Genies in Arabian Nights serve our curiosities,
and the monsters we read about in school-
books of fairytales, too. But we aren't kids
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for Dunya Mikhail

I thank everyone I don't love…/They don't turn my life upside down.
- "Non-military Statements" by DM
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(for Muni Auntie, Shohail Uncle and Bachchu Uncle)

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