Poetry from Mahbub

Middle aged South Asian man with glasses and combed black hair and a white collared shirt

A Valentine’s Affection

It was Valentine’s afternoon

Just before the Arts Faculty Gate of Dhaka University

While walking towards the Dhaka Book Fair

The couple standing face to face

And thousands were running and walking around them

The eyes of the girl wet in eye drops

No sooner had my eyes blinked on the second time

The girl in the flower round her head

Slapped him on two times

And again repeatedly

Then her boyfriend getting nothing to say or doing

In his bewilderment he stopped for a while

And blew a big slap on her face

From beside their another friend came in

Turned them away and walked to the other

The two young boys passing me

Went away saying and laughing

“O Ma, What I looked!”

“O Ma, What I heard!”

NAEM Hostel, Dhaka,

14/02/2020

How to Write

It stops my breath standing on the long line to pass the gate

In such a jam-packed condition

I turn back myself whether I am Ok or not

In this huge gathering my body sometimes gets twitched and switched off

It is as if the whole people of the world were joining one by one

In this Dhaka Book Fair the young and the old,

The boys and the girls like the flock of birds flying from here to there

Again like the swarm of bees

Getting together they like to meet each other in the Book Stalls

Not a single face I can recognize here

But the faces and the eyes glitter before me

I see the stars in the sky

I see the stars before me

Walking alone all the way

To save the moment in ray

I bought a book about ‘How to Write.’

NAEM Hostel, Dhaka,

14/02/2020

Interaction

What is the interaction between plants and animals?

We, the teachers and the students

Interact in the classroom

Outside the classroom

Engaged in same as the ecological balance

With the attentive mind following the eye contact

The learning outcome compared to the transpiration process

A touching relationship throughout the whole life

Sharing ideas and thoughts like oxygen and carbon dioxide

One leaves and the other receives

What a wonderful physiological growth!

Exchanging life to each other

Throughout a magnifying glass

Spreads its range of love and respect as the day advances more.

Chapainawabganj,Bangladesh
10/03/2020

Covid 19

I think of what I write

No subject or field I find that I cultivate

So many subjects to work with

But no more speed my hands over

Stand still face to face we realize

What it actually happens in Wuhan City of China?

And gradually the whole earth mesmerized

By inhaling – exhaling breath

By sneezing and loving hands spread death

I am now confined to bed or home, walk round the walls

Try to be safe from this virus

O life – dark and death

Beauty goes so far tight in the abyss of thought and anxiety

Body shakes, heart gets barred suffocating breath

Eyes burns to the long line deaths in the world’s hospitals.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

27/03/2020

The Corona Island

The world has turned into a single Island

Or a no man’s land

A swarm of bee

People would run through too much busy

How does it look now?

You can say a ghostly one

Miles after miles the roads are like —-

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

The smoggy, lurid streets of the modern city

Thwarts at him “Overwhelming questions”

Losing in thought to express the nature of his crisis

All offices, schools, colleges or universities go off

Only a few while necessary out

People are like the birds shot

Try to fly out but scared 

Ever and anon

We like to obey the rules of isolation.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

30/03/2020