| Poetry |
In shimmering heat I sweated, then slipped
into the cool of a War Museum at RU. Guards
sat around half the day, watching visitors
go from one gallery to another, myself awestruck –
how the seventies turmoil, rapes and killings
during my land’s labour pains came alive
on the things kept, telling what the monsters,
as Qumrul painted them, did. Rifles, exploded
shells & grenades I saw, and the martyrs’
skulls & bones neatly arranged in glass-boxes
and the display: I looked at a nation’s birth-
certificates & newspaper clippings in surprise!
A bit of the life as it was lived by millions.
I heard The authority deserves praise! The sweat
felt like refrigerated cold, getting me
frosted over in fear of what I might shoulder.
Then I stood with my eyes glued to a black-
n-white still take: brush-fired a mother
with her child’s head poking out of the womb –
the conspiracy’s win over a new life! I wondered
whether we all are like the child dead at birth.
by Sofiul Azam
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