What has happened to the Earth?
With the rise of human unrest, everything around feels breathless.
Distrust and rashness spread in every direction
Like unleashed waves of overflowing waters outside
They devour our shelter, devour our lives
Nature itself is losing its own rhythm.
Rivers are drying, settlements are burning
Cities and ports drift away
The game of justice and injustice goes on
While elsewhere piles of bodies keep rising.
As if from behind, someone pulls the strings,
Drunk on the intoxication of the dead—
Someone, keeps pulling the strings.
Just as history’s pages reveal:
Seeking one’s own heroism
In exchange for human corpses.
Yet we grew up knowing
We learned it from the pages of books—
Human beings exist for one another.
As if in some mythic war
The might of the powerful is being put on display
Oil for oil’s own sorcery
Gold mines and strings of pearls—
Searching and searching
One day the earth will give up
All its glittering treasures from within.
And that day,
Powerful and powerless alike
Will blur into one voice and ask together:
What has happened to the Earth?
Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.
Once when he was in grade ten in 1990, his Bangla letter was selected as the best one from Deutsche Welle, Germany Radio that broadcast Bangla news for the Banglalee people. And he was given 50 Dutch Mark as his award. They would ask letters from the listeners to the news in Bangla and select one letter for the best one in every month.
From 17 to 30 September, in 2018 he received a higher training in teaching English language in Kasetsart University of Thailand for secondary level students through a government order from education ministry.
On 06 November 2015 he achieved Amjad Ali Mondal Medal for his contribution in education field by a development organization in the conference and felicitation function for the honorable personalities at Rajshahi College Auditorium.
On 30 December 2017 from West Bengal in India he was declared a ‘Literary Charioteer’ in Bangobandhu Literary and World Bango Conference and they awarded him with a Gold Medal in their International Literary Conference and Prize Giving Ceremony.
In 2018, he achieved Prodipto Lirerary Award in Prodipto Literary Conference at Kesorhat, Rajshahi for poems in Bangla literature. He received honorary crest from the administration of Chapainawabganj District Literary Conference and Cultural Function in 2021 and 2022 consecutively.
His poems have been published in many international online magazines such as Juntos Por las L Raven Cage Zine, and Area Felix. His poems have been translated and published in Argentine and Serbian, and he participated in many international online cultural meetings.