Asad’s Shirt
Asad’s shirt flutters
like red oleanders
like the red clouds of dusk
freely in the sky.
His clean shirt had buttons
sewn with love by his sister
sometimes
with golden threads of the heart.
His shirt has been
often left out to dry
in the sun.
Now
away from his mother’s courtyard,
away from the soft shade of the pomegranate tree,
his shirt
flutters relentlessly
on the main street
on factory chimneys
in nooks and corners
of avenues
and for the sun-scorched
stretches of our hearts
every time we
consciously congregated
for protest.
Hiding our weaknesses, fears,
guilt, shame,
Asad’s shirt has become
the flag of
our [rebellious] hearts.
Poem by Shamsur Rahman, widely acclaimed poet from Bangladesh. This poem, written in 1969, has communist undertones and it has always been speculated that political Marxists drew inspiration from this poem. I have translated from the original Bengali poem in the best and simplest manner I could have, with the little [sometimes horrible] Bengali that I know (the translation was initiated by one of
jhumpa's posts). Corrections are welcome.