#Title

THREE SONGS

Kazi Nazrul Islam
ILLUSTRATION:
MAISHA SYEDA
TRANSLATED BY MOHAMMAD SHAFIQUL ISLAM
Mohammad Shafiqul Islam is a poet, translator, and academic, and Professor of English literature at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. Email: msislam-eng@sust.edu.

A wounded bird
Like a wounded bird, my songs
tumble down at your feet, my love.
Hold in your heart this songbird
wounded with an arrow of love.
At your feet shall I embrace death,
O the peerless beauty, my love.
On lyrical wings, he was flying in the sky,
why did you pierce him with an arrow in the eye?
From his dying voice,
such a tender tune gushes forth!
In the midst of intense agonies,
ambrosia dribbles from my melancholic notes.

The strange bird
In what tune do you sing, O strange bird!
It’s sweet wine, not tune—
O Saki strewing a mellow strain.
Sitting by the window,
why, with this agonizing melancholy,
do you wake me every day
calling out so dolefully?
At your tune weeps the dawn,
embracing the sinking moon.
Dews as if tears roll down
soaking the descending dawn sky.
I cannot stay home
for my heart’s restlessness.
I cannot keep my mind on work,
with the eyes rife in tears.

ACROSS PATHWAYS
In a trice if we ever meet across pathways,
lay your eyes on mine
as you’d do in the past—
across pathways, my love.
That moment if you feel to weep,
don’t pretend to hide your tears.
Once more call me with summer name
that you’d do with in the past, my love.
Your loved one beside you
will be my friend too—don’t worry.
I’ll implore him to love you
more than I do, my love.
If you get hurt, losing your love,
the distressed and forlorn me,
quietly shall I depart.
A thorn on the way I won’t stand—
so forsake me and be happy, my love.
In a trice if we ever meet across pathways…