Mainstream WeeklyHome > Archives (2006 on) > 2012 > They
February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day as declared by the United Nations in recognition of the martyrs of the language movement who fell to the Pakistani police’s bullets on that day in 1952 in Dhaka while demanding that their mother tongue, Bangla, be made the official language of East Pakistan. Remembering those martyrs on the sixtieth anniversary of that movement and the fiftieth anniversary of Bangladesh’s liberation, we are carrying the following poem by a distinguished Bangladeshi intellectual. This was translated by Pritish Nandy and included in a booklet Poems from Bangladesh
(published by Perspective Publications in June 1971).
(published by Perspective Publications in June 1971).
In falgun they always return.Not there:amidst the flowers and the foliage,in the splendour of many colours.There:where hearts mingleat the source of the river of life.They return again and again.With the arrogance of youthand the passion for work, they loved lifeand embraced the silence of death.They sacrificed their lives:and with each deaththey freed countless lives.They are always with us.They are always with him:that child whose small feet trample the dewon soft green grass,who holds high the blood rose in his handlike a banner.They are also with that blind old manwho finds the shadows of his ribson the iron railings near the monument.And with that silent girlwho suddenly becomes a wave in this seaof countless people.Every falgun they return.Awake, they wake us to join them.They give us words while they seek a language.
Anisuzzaman
