Classic Poem

Have they destroyed your memorial minaret?
Don't you fear, comrade,
We are still here
A family of ten million, alert and wide awake.
The base that no emperor
Could ever crush
At whose feet
The diamond crown, the blue proclamation,
The naked sabre and the tempestuous cavalry
Have crumbled into dust.

We are that simple hero, that unique crowd,
We who work in fields,
Row on rivers,
Labour in factories!

Have they destroyed your brick minaret?
Well, let them. Don't you fear, comrade,
We a family of ten million
Are alert and wide awake.

What kind of a death is this?
Has anyone seen such a death
Where no one weeps at the head
Of the departed?

Where all sorrow and pain from the Himalayas to the sea
Only come together and blossom
Into the colour of a single flag?
What kind of a death is this?

Has anyone seen such a death
Where no one laments aloud
Where only the sitar turns into the
Gorgeous stream of a mighty waterfall,
Where the season of many words
Leads the pen on to an era of Poetry?

Have they destroyed your brick minaret?
Well, let them. We forty million masons
Have built a minaret with a violin's tune
And the bright colours of our purple heart.

The lives of the martyrs float like islands
In the dark deep eyes of
Rainbows and palash flowers
We have etched for you their names
Through the ages
In the foamy stones of love.

That is why, comrad,
On the granite peak of ou
thousand fistsıShines lik
the sun
The sun of a mighty pledge.

[Translated by Kabir Chowdhury]