Roar, O Freedom

What shall I do with the spring when I hear only the cuckoo moaning and cannot see gorgeous flowers blossom? What shall I do with the garden Where no birds ever pays a visit? Oh, how rough and stony is this earth! Skeletons of trees stand, row after row, like so many desolate ghosts. What shall I do with the love that places on my head a crown of thorns and hands out to me the cup of hamlock? What purpose the road serve On which no one treads, Where vendors of coloured ice-cream Or waves of city-inundating processions are never seen? I had called you, dearest When we started our journey With our face turned to the rising sun. When the back-pull of bourgeois charm Kept from your ears the soaring sound of the people singing. You are still prisoner under the claws of a fierce eagle. you cannot yet walk on a road with the rainbow coloured carpet spread on it. Oh, how tough it is to keep going without you by my side! A horrid monster comes, casting dark shadows all around; in a moment he crushes under his heels the foundation of new civilization, he hangs the full moon on the scaffold, declares unlawful the blossoming of the lotus and the rose. He bans my poems, stanza by stanza, quietly, without any fanfare, he bans your breath, he bans the fragrance of your hair. By the bent body of the young girl sitting on the lonely porch of old age. waiting for the dawn of happy days. By the long days and nights of Nelson Mandella spent behind the bars. By the martyrdom of the heroic youth Noor Hossain, O Freedom, raise your head like Titan, give a sky shattering shout, tear off the chain around your wrists. Roar, Freedom, roar mightily! [Translated by Kabir Chowdhury]