For you, O Freedom

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For You, O Freedom 

Shamsur Rahman


For you, O Freedom

for you,

How many more times must we drift in the river of blood?

How many more times must we witness the burning of lives?


O Freedom, for you promised to come, 

Sakina Bibi’s forehead was broken,

Haridasi lost vermilion in her hair parting.

For you promised to come, O Freedom,

Olive colored tanks rolled into the city streets,

roaring like demons.


For you promised to come, O Freedom,

Student dormitories, slums were torn apart,

Recoilless rifles and machine guns burst everywhere like cruel popcorn.

For you promised to come, village to village turned to ash.


For you promised to come,

A lone dog howled endlessly in the desolate lanes of it's master’s ruined homestead,

For you promised to come, O Freedom,

Helpless child crawled over the corpses of its parents.


For you, O Freedom-

for you,

How many more times must we drift in the river of blood?

How many more times must we see this burning of lives?


For you, O Freedom,

An old man sits silently on a broken veranda,

with tired eyes flickering in the pale afternoon light,

His hair trembling in the breeze.


For you, O Freedom,

A widow from the Molla family 

stands gripping a shaky bamboo pole

beside the charred home.


For you, O Freedom,

A skeletal orphan girl with hollow plate in hands sits at the roadside.


For you-

Sagir Ali, the young farmer of Shahbajpur,

Kesto Das, the bravest fisherman of Jelepalli,

Matlub Mia, the master boatman of the Meghna River,

and Rustam Sheikh, who rowed against stormy winds roaring Gazi Gazi,

the rickshaw puller of Dhaka,

whose lungs now belong to worms,

and that fearless youth roaming into the forests with rifle on shoulder,

whose footsteps carry the weight of a new world waiting to be born-

All of them wait, restless and impatient, 

for you, O Freedom.


From one edge of the earth to the other,

with echoes of burning proclamations,

Raising new flags, beating defiance of drums across the sky,

Here, in this Bengal-

O Freedom, you must have to come.



Poet's Photo :

Shamsur Rahman 


Poet's Bio :

Shamsur Rahman (23 October 1929 – 17 August 2006) was a veteran Bangladeshi poet, columnist and journalist. He is mostly known as 'civic poet' as he basically used urban plot and setting in most of his poems. Rahman wrote more than sixty books. But he is famous for his poems. Especially poems on Bangladesh's independence, it's deep rooted struggling features and more specifically depicting urban life style, city dweller's inner sorrow and conflicts are the sole theme or subject of his writings. Yet, he is considered a key figure in Bengali literature. He earned numerous awards and titles for his contribution in Bengali literature. 

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