A Match Stick / Abu Karim

Before lighting every cigarette

I observe the net and white match stick.

Burning the crown of black, the red flame gradually

goes on burning the woody appearance.

In that flame I find your eye lashes full with love;

in the womb of that flame there is the reflection

of your eyes with deep sonority.

The color of every stick is so white that it seems to be a nun;

once it was a tree alive in a forest

having a cheerful indomitable life with the murmur

of a river and the chirping of birds-

but now it has forgotten that past,

now it is getting burnt shorn of protest.

That flame for an instant attracts my mind—

as though that crimson rose whose shadow

symbolizes my love—

as thought that primeval fire-whose touch would burn

the melancholic piles of capital

to ash.

Before lighting every stick, I take it in my keen observation.

Once it was a tree with life in a forest

now being turned into ashes

under the light of your soul shedding tears alone.

The dying gun powder is waiting- a crown on its head

for the bourgeois civilization

just a squeeze will burn it into ash.

We have to possess courageous love to light the stick.

August 10, 1976

‘দেশলাই কাঠি’ কবিতার অনুবাদ

[Translated by Dulal Al Monsur]