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Dewdrops on the grass
Saleha Chaudhury keeps getting drawn to a country she left in the earlier part of the 1970s. It perhaps did not occur to her back in 1972, within months of the liberation of Bangladesh, a time that would take her to foreign shores, that intellectually she would remain tied to the old moorings, that her permanency of residence in London would not come in the way of her reconnecting with her country.
And so she keeps coming back, in form and substance which nevertheless informs you that while she remains every inch a Bengali, she also brings into her literature, indeed into her poetry elements of western culture which only add to the richness of her intellectual world. In Poetry Diary 2012, she does precisely that. Why, one might ask, does poetry have to be fettered to a particular year?
The answer, again, lies in poetry itself. There are all the turnings of the seasons; and the seasons keep coming back. But then, there are certain seasons which the soul must keep embedded within itself. A year which passes, or will pass, sometimes is a reminder of the immediacy of our surroundings being proof of the universality of time. Read, then, these poems — interspersed with quotes from individuals of substance straddling the history of literary fame — that draw our attention to the twelve months of the year. Read, for January:
A sky is blue,
Over the Atlantic Ocean Windowseat in a plane. I pen, poem after poem. Something of the liberated soul underlines the poem. Thoughts are supposed to come in clearer mould in mid air. In silence? Observe what Saleha Chaudhury has to say in another poem dedicated to January:
In silence flowers bloom,
In silence trees grow,
In silence everything reflects, We learn more.
But soon the poet moves on, to her need to talk in February. Words are what she plays with as she writes:
Words are freshly minted coins!
I toss them and turn them
Over my writing desk.
Bring the lyrical into the words, set them into a rhythm and what you have is a flute. And how does Chaudhury define the flute? Watch:
Some deep cut holes
On a tender bamboo stick
It oozes music.
Intimations of spring, or the earliest hint of a world about to change, are all a-flutter when March tiptoes in. Life gets moving, the heart begins beating in good cheer once more. The poet is celebratory mood:
Love wakes up
Lazarus from the grave
When he is hopelessly dead.
It is dawn which makes a difference. The moment of coming alive shoots forth across nature, most pleasantly painfullike:
Dawn breaks
Dewdrops on the grass of blade.
My heart aches.
But then there are the realities which sink in. In October, as the leaves fall and the lights grow dim, it is banality which enters the home. Chaudhury gives it a name. She calls it 'HauntingTune':
Ages ago we shared a song!
At the sink, in a boring kitchen The tune haunts.
Must someone be blamed? Saleha Chaudhury's thoughts in September are clear about human frailties, this propensity to point the finger for man's follies at divinity:
The definition of God is
We blame Him
For all our follies.
The poetry here gives a lilt to the imagination. Nostalgia wriggles itself out of torpor in the bitterness of a December day. Chaudhury reaches out to J.M. Barrie, to speak to us of inexplicable seasonal charms. Barrie makes you remember, for the mind and the imagination are all:
God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
It is that fairy tale hour when you should be looking out for stars in the deepening night sky.
SYED BADRUL AHSAN IS EXECUTIVE EDITOR,
THE DAILY STAR.