Gram Suhrid Forum

Translated By Alam Mahbub
Leaving Kaurikhara behind,
we gathered beneath the green
                   maternal shade
of Sushilabala Primary School,
raising a forum of fellowship
hand in hand.
Some old Das patriarch,
Kuchdas Babu perhaps,
 
once built a homestead
beside the Tarabunia canal.
 
Through time’s erosion,
 
Kuchdaskathi became Kustakathi. 
Rows of school benches,
lessons of numbers 
 and memory.
Sushilabala in white�"
 
like a humble Begum Rokeya
among reeds, 
      kans flowers,
and the dusk-river of nol grass.
An exhausted cart-driver
drowses beneath the sun.
Yet here
we shall light the pilgrim lamp�"
 
for Muslim labourers, potters, 
Malo fisherfolk,
for all who carry the dust of this soil.
O companion of human tenderness,
 
will you hear poetry
hidden inside conversation?
Come then�"
to this field of art and creation,
 
where a poet of new beginnings
draws the living portrait
Gram Suhrid Forum. And still,
                  fixed in the earth,
stands the signpost:
Haji Motaleb Colony.