Best Bangladesh Poems
Between the Indian plains and the hills of Burma.
Protected by the affection of its three guardians,
The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna.
From there - this story began.
On a grassland full of hopes and dreams.
Right at the edges of Brahmaputra river.
Lying there without any wheezes,
A sad and lonely royal bengal tiger.
He remembers the smell of the Sal trees,
In Bhawal Park near Dhaka, his place of birth.
He remembers the sounds of peacocks, elephants, and deers
His heart wish they were not yet became a myth.
He has been a part of Pohela Boishakh feast.
When people bathe early and dress in fine clothes.
All the men put on their kurta, or the finest lungi at least
While women dress in sharee, letting their beauty to be exposed.
Tears streamed from his cheek. As the old tiger weep.
A momentary recalled the legends of his ascendant.
The story of the one whose once Sultan beloved,
And the one whose survives the liberation war in 1971.
The tiger now stood, underline his courage and chivalry.
"Will this liberty be felt by my offspring?" his mind fly.
Despite the poverty, instability, and all its vulnerability,
There is more to Bangladesh than meets the eye.
~ For the "LOVE LETTERS TO THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT" contest by Cyndi MacMillan
Bangladesh
Bangladesh my Homeland,
Bangladesh my Dreamland,
Bangladesh I love you,
Bangladesh, I live for you.
The green flag out of the red ball,
Plays the flute on golden grains tall.
The motion of charming water lily,
Reminds all Tigers to snatch back lost glory.
Oh my Homeland, Oh my Mother!
Hence you’re rewarded with plenty of rivers,
The Hilsha and its silvery shine
Makes the magpie lovely dance in rain.
Our fishermen and their vessels,
Make the motherland ample
And secure thy royal castle.
Each tissue of thy Jack-fruit,
Can meet up hunger and play flute
We love you, we love our Bangla
Pretty Mom, you’re softy-sweetie Bangla!
Flood is a very common occurrence in Bangladesh
Due to its position and altitude.
In-spite of its all experience and forecast,
The country always falls in awkward situation,
When flood comes with all its loud and lechery.
1966, 1970, 1987, 1988, 1998 ?and 2007 in 20th century
Deadly flood barred Bangladesh beastly.
Flood situation-2017 in Bangladesh
Is much ravenous, catastrophic all over the country,
More starving in the north Bengal.
Already left few hundreds people dead.
Many people are suffering with their
Cattle, children and old member of the family.
Food crisis is acute there, cooking is impossible,
As their huts already got swamped and liquidated.
Lakdi by which they cook have been soaked,
Dry food and emergency medicine they now need
Are being made available in a slow pace by the organizations.
And no place now spared there inundated
To stay in, let alone sleep or associate.
To come out from the saddening situation
We need collective efforts,
But lack of political concomitance
And for religious selfishness it is very difficult to
Let all assets and hands to be functional at a time.
We feel our world is a village, so, any disaster happen
In any corner of the world is all’s responsibility.
We are living now in a very connected world,
Anybody’s grievance is everybody’s concern,
So, we can hope no calamity is stronger than
Our collective efforts, our collective emotion and responsibility.
Power tends to corrupt
And absolute power corrupts absolutely
This is so true in the political arena of Bangladesh
The ruling party has made the justice department
And anti-corruption commission a hoax
They forgive the criminals on political grounds
And withdraw all corruption charges against themselves
By hook or by crook
Politicization is taking place in every sphere of the country
Votes are being bought and sold like commodities
In competitive markets
The criminals are becoming leaders
Because of their black market money and liaisons
The mouth of the civil society are being gagged
By large amount of hush money
People who are trying to eliminate poverty from the country
Are being called bloodsuckers by the so-called patriots
Whereas the real bloodsuckers are in disguise
Of the heroes and heroines
A civil war flared up and raged on for freedom
Unequal it was, this bloody war for honour and secession
The natives renamed their land Bangladesh
Inviting anew the wrath of a desperate West
The army’s presence then, was overwhelming in their land
Due to the simmering discontent within and a border to be manned
And from ground and air the armed forces effortlessly struck
It was anarchy all the way with the West’s army running amuck
In thousands they perished, nameless sons of the soil
But the army had orders and the people’s aspirations to foil
They killed and burned and looted and raped
Digging mass graves to conceal evidence of the dead
Granaries were burnt and villages razed
The troops shot all that moved and Bangladesh bled
Women captured alive, endured inhuman pain
Brutally used, they’d be killed with a bullet to the brain
Through their brutal acts in ’71, a sovereign state struck terror
And as news of the carnage spread, an impotent world watched in horror
Protector of civilian lives, the army had turned butcher
Nine months later and a million dead, Bangladesh resembled an abattoir
Resistance was futile against the war machine
Would the aspirations of Bangladeshi’s remain just a dream?
In this riverine country that year, the monsoons suddenly arrived
Rivers in spate impeded troop movement and halted the state’s genocide
With the receding flood waters, India joined the fray
But now Nixon’s 7th Fleet showing solidarity with Pakistan steamed into Bengal’s bay
Mercifully the Indian leadership stood resolute and undeterred
And the rampaging army in Bangladesh was quickly outmanoeuvred
There was no resistance from the state sponsored killers
Ninety thousand troops surrendered meekly to the liberators
Reports of atrocities and mass graves were dismissed as slander and lies
The masterminds were let off the hook, pressured by powerful allies
We were one people, neighbours and kin
Before independence and the politician’s whim
In August’47, the brotherhood ended
The country was partitioned and we were independent
Democracy worked in India, floundered in neighbouring Pakistan
Victim to army rule and the power of the gun
And many a times since ’47, the two nations went to war
As defender of sovereign territory or blatant aggressor
A tenuous existence was Pakistan’s, to our east and west
Their land and race divide put this bond to test
The East staked its claim to governance on the people’s mandate
But unwilling to yield power, the West unleashed a campaign of hate
Aspirations muzzled after twenty four years, bypassing legislation
Saw the birth of a defiant East yearning for liberation
A hotbed of political activity, Dhaka University was targeted
It was spring that night in ’71, the campus was surrounded
Troops loyal to the West sealed roads under night’s cover
And shells were fired in haloed ground from battle tank and mortar
Shrieking death, it is said, arced through the sky that night
Exploding amid the campus buildings, in blinding flashes of light
Besieged and battered was the East’s cradle of intellect
A grim warning for the masses, March 25 was the date
Then ground troops with weapons of death silently moved in
To slaughter at close quarters, academics and their kin
As flames licked the sky from adjacent slums
Fleeing residents were mowed down by soldiers with machine guns
The stench of burning flesh filled the night air
As bodies piled on streets were set on fire
The sky glowed red that night, as Dhaka burned
The orgy in the campus ended after all found were gunned
The handful, who escaped death, shed silent tears
As ghastly fires burned to ashes, family and peers
Sitting on the peak of mountain, whose face
frequently I see; walking with my beloved
on the streets of Rome, whose words I remember;
like a pet pigeon, to whom my heart and body
come back when the sun sets; setting whose eyes
into my eyes, I see the beauty of a yellow bird
and seeing the prosaic fly of crow and shalik
I get every day speechless both in joy and wonder-
she is my Bangladesh, as dearest to me as water for thirst
at a noon of Chaitra; in a winter-morning she is my shawl
of Kashmir, my safe home during a storm and rain, and the sail
of my good luck upstream swelling like a tandur-bread.
Writing my name on that sail, I, the last boatman of century,
have started rowing my boat laying stake to life.
*shalik- a kind of bird * tandur- a kind of big bread
Corruption is everywhere
You go now-a-days
In government offices!
A little brown river,
Naked children splashing in its muddy waters,
Their mirth and laughter of raucous delight,
Untroubled by foresight.
A tiny hut made of mud,
Parching in the dazzles of the ruthless sun,
The bent figure of a farmer as he nurtures
The field of paddy that his simple heart treasures.
A bustling bazaar,
With its overwhelming array of sights and smells,
A man with a cart full of ripe plump litchis, a rickshaw puller,
Whiling away the time, adding to the cacophony as they bicker.
As the sun sets over the distant ragged hills and lush overgrowth,
I ponder on what I have retained
From the journey across the plains of my mother land,
Bangladesh, where happiness and poverty, go hand in hand.
In Bangladesh most of the beautiful girls
Are raped by their fathers
The victims shed tears
In the darkness of night
Most of times they cannot protest
Their mouths are gagged
By their horrid shamefulness and unknown fears
These fathers are lascivious like animals and insects
They cannot control wild desires
Their daughters are like flowers
Beautiful, sweet-smelling, innocent and helpless
Many of them later become loose characters
Some of them become sex-workers
And others face unhappy married life ultimately
These girls think it would be better
If they were dead long before they were raped
Or their fathers buried them alive like the dark ages
When they were newborn
I have heard hundreds of such cases
And it makes me wonder how bad this society is
And how can we metamorphose
These human animals into real humans
Fate has finally caught up with their war crimes
And their memories now recall those bloodied times
The women they raped and the children they killed
The freedom fighters they tortured and the dread they instilled
These were their countrymen, their brothers, their kin
Heady with power and to the devil akin
Tried by the courts and now condemned to die
The noose is finally tightening, their final moments nigh
Following the mayhem, Bangladesh rose like the phoenix
And we followed with bated breath the traumatic experience
The times, they are not a changing, Dylan should now agree
When demented regimes repeatedly run amok, there is no place to flee
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O my mom! Your sky and your air
Attract me like a flute-player!
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O my mom!
In spring in mango gardens
I have smelt holy fragrance!
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O my mom!
What have I seen in autumn?
Fields full of crops so handsome!
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O the beauty and the shadow
Where my affection and love grow
Under the banyan trees and
On the shores of rivers that flow!
O my mom!
Your words are sweetest to me!
If you look pale and gloomy:
I shed tears in sympathy.
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
There was a lady from Bangladesh,
Who wanted a bath to become fresh,
So she dived into a river,
But felt herself shiver,
So she swam in a thick woolen dress.
There was an old man of Bangladesh,
Who watched his wife making Shandesh.
But once, by mistake,
She made a cake
What an unfortunate man of Bangladesh!
LORD, I humbly greet Thee who got me up, gifted me another DAY
God in THREE PERSONS: Father, Son, Spirit, I love Thee as YOU first loved me
I have a prayer list, and "O" countries, for YOU alone are source & HEALER
Yet, "adoration" is the FIRST STEP (one way to PRAY) using "A-C-T-S"
The letters, not the word, "A" for adoring Him, God IS (Love) & LORD of lords
The "C" is for confession of sins. Then "T"hanksgiving and "S"upplication
I intercede, Abba-Father, for peoples in LOCKDOWN - quarantine as The virus
Called the common "Corona," a "garland" with aura, but what a CRISIS
Fear is everywhere, we rebuke it in Jesus' name, to Him we are most dear
Bless the global family, from islands to former Empires, praying together
Today, especially for OMAN, the only member of the UN that begins with "O"
But LORD the needs are so many, & I did forget Albania, Andorra, Bahamas
Resilient Bosnia-Herzegovina in the first two lists, I do not dislike them for'
I learn from Jesus, that FORGIVING opens doors to the miracles in LOVE
Shalom, shalOM, AUM, salaam, peace, pace, paz, vrede, eirene, shanthi om!
NOTE: I have not structured this form with iambic feet or any other meter.
I found this form suits my faith in Jesus as LORD, closest to how I feel: SONnet