Day-Labourer

Your luxury cars are plying through the streets And your big ships are cruising Over the Oceans. The fast steam engines are running on railways, The country is filled with plants and machinery: Can you tell me whose contributions are all these? With whose blood are your buildings Painted red? Dismantle them and you'll find On each piece of brick vividly written the names. You may not know; but each and Every grain of dust is aware of it, The meaning of those roads, vessels, trains, And of those decorative palaces. The good days are coming soon: Day after day your debts are being inflated You must pay back those heavy debts. Those who with hard labour broke the rugged hills With hammer, shovel and pick-axe, Their bones today are strewn 'on either side Of those very roads. Those who, in order to render You service, became day-labourers. Those who covered their cherished body with dust Only to carry you and your belongings, They are indeed the real human beings, they are the saints. I sing their 'inner voice' through my songs. Marching over their painful suffering breasts The New Revolution will raise its new head. You are reclining at ease On the top of the third floor, While we are rotting at the bottom; Still you love to be Addressed as 'My Lord'? Absurd! That cannot be! ! The helm of this world must remain under Those, whose mind and soul are soaked with Sweet love for the motherland; Those who journeyed with others through The tiresome roads and covered their Feet with dust; I shall pick up That very dust from their feet and put it on my head as a holy sacred offering. Smeared with the blood of the pain stricken Suffering humanity of the world the new sun of the new Dawn is rising above the horizon. Break open today those ugly rusty doors Of your narrow congested heart; Take off those artificial garments of yours Which look unnatural like coloured leather. Look at the concentrated condensed air Appearing deep blue in the sky, Let them enter free in a frolicsome way direct into your inner hearts - Unlock all those obstructing clutches! Let the entire blue Heaven fall down in our midst, Let the moon, the sun and the stars shower on us. Let all people of all times and all climes come together And stand up at the same confluence to listen to The anthem of great unity under one flag- If you torment here a single soul The pain resounds in a crescendo In the aggrieved hearts of all others. Insult to a single person here means Humiliating the whole of humanity An insult to all of us. Today is the day of upheaval Against the heart-rending agony and pain Of the great Human-beings of the world. [Translation: Amir Hossain Chowdhury]