Selecting a Mate / Abu Karim

While selecting a mate, a duck or a cock

does not follow any discrimination.

Yet for a wild duck or a wild fowl

that truth may not be applicable.

It is usually found among wild birds that

they select their definite

respective mates for the whole year.

They mate together

for the purpose of breeding.

Yet can it be definitely supposed that

they mate only for pleasure or breeding?

They make a particular nest out of the

combined toils of the two.

When a young one is hatched out of the shell,

the mother bird and the father bird

rear the young one with their combined cares.

Men builds their nest following the styles

of wild birds, and go on living.

They seek fidelity in their mates,

get beguiled.

Leaving behind the wild realms,

and entering human habitations,

birds have forgotten wildness;

in the  way the taste of human beings

look for the tastes of new flesh;

only human beings are devoid of fidelity.

26 March 2003

‘সঙ্গী নির্বাচন’ কবিতার অনুবাদ

[Translated by Dulal Al Monsur]