#Title

Cleaner of dawn
PHOTO: MAISHA SYEDA
FATIUL HUQ SUJOY
She doesn’t need an alarm
For the last hour of the night.
She listens to the light snore
Of a city fast asleep:
A drop of drool from a dozing darwan
A thief mid climb behind,
The deadline dash of late night learners
Now enrolled in the grind.
A canine cry for far off loss
Heart-piercing yet tender,
Asphalt hum to the heavy haulers
Finally free to enter.
Tap tap go the remote romantics
Sleepless in shut-off rooms,
Flip flap runs the nocturn drunkard
From a wrong turn through the plumes.
Her weapon of a broom in hand
She strides, the cleaner of dawn.
She rolls her cart, two creaks in silence,
In search of last day’s rot:
They’re littered by the sidewalk
In the hollow built for flood,
They’re remains of a city bustling,
Echoes of a day passed.
They are the textbook excerpts
To feed jhalmuri and peanuts.
They’re the see-through plastic wrappers,
A shared kulfi between it.
They’re the high rise concrete flakes
Of a city under construction.
They’re the false fog, dust in disguise
Hiding their pale complexion.
They piled up here, under footsteps and tire marks
These corpses, clumped together,
Breathless in death, heedless of thought
They lie in wait for her.
She shakes her head to lessons unlearnt
To find them here once again.
She passes by their sorry forms
To pass on their tales
To no one:
This one’s a poet, by the look of its frown
Etched by realities that don’t rhyme.
That one’s a writer, that gap by its head
Spilling stories of new divine.
Here lies the scholar, with a pen stabbed through,
Ink that never ran to impress.
There rests the humorist, tooth pulled from its grin,
Eyes scratched up as a jest.
The rebel and the leader sleep clasping their hands
Their voices a whisper to the ghosts;
Their heart aches to reach their lips,
The pathway seized,
Long gone to friends and foe.
With one sweep of her trusted broom,
With one sigh that lingered,
She turned them to dust, grey stars in the night
Pushed by an early gust
No witness in sight.
She doesn’t need an alarm
For the first hour of the day.
She listens to the tight stretch
Of a city stirring awake:
Of jogging boots fleeing sickness,
Of a-chirping a-dancing in the air,
Of heckler howls for the freshly farmed,
In rhythm to calls for prayer.
Through the sizzle of fried egg, on a drizzle of oil,
She leaves her post determined.
She let forget all that she cleaned
All behind the crimson curtain.
“Cleaner of dawn” was originally recited at SHOUT xDS Slam Poetry Nights that took place earlier this year at Dhaka Lit Fest.
Fatiul Huq Sujoy is a researcher and fiction writer. Reach him at s.f.huq11@gmail.com.