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This Valley of Death, Not My Country

 Navarun Bhattacharya (1948-2014)


The father, afraid to identify his son’s body,

I hate him-

The brother, still shameless and normal,

I hate him-

The teacher, intellectual, poet and clerk

Failing to seek revenge for this murder on the open road

I hate him-

 

Eight dead bodies

Lying across my consciousness

I become mad

Eight pairs of open eyes haunt me in my sleep

I scream

They are calling me in the garden all the time

I go crazy

I will commit suicide

I will do whatever they want.

 

It’s time to write poetry now

On the wall, in a manifesto, on a stencil

With own blood, tears, and bones, following the collage method

Poetry can be written now

With a face torn apart by the most intense pain

Faced with terror, in the van's scorching headlights

With a steady gaze

Poetry can be thrown now

To the murderer,

By denying 38 and everything else

Poetry can be read now

In the stone-cold lock-up

Shaking the flashlight during the autopsy

In the courthouse run by the murderer

In the academy of false literacy

In the state apparatus of exploitation and terror

In the chest of the military-civilian authorities

 

Let the poetry of protest echo

Let the poets of Bangladesh also

Be ready like Lorca

Let the suffocated dead body that was forced to disappear

Be stitched up with the Stengun shots

Yet the landscape of poetry

 Needs to be surrounded by urbanite emotions.

 

This valley of death is not my country

This stage of the executioners' joy is not my country

This vast crematorium is not my country

This blood-soaked slaughterhouse is not my country

I will take back my country

I will pull into my chest the misty afternoon and the breeze

Fireflies surround my whole body, zooming from mountain to mountain

Countless hearts are grains, fairy tales, flowers, women, rivers

I will name a star after each martyr as I wish

I will call the swaying wind, the sun's shadow, a lake like a fish's eye

Love - from which I have been light years away since birth -

I will also draw it close to my heart on the day of the celebration.

 

Interrogation- all day long- with a thousand watts of light in my eyes

I refuse

Needles in my nails, lying on ice in a slushy pit

I refuse

Tied up by my feet until blood drips from my nose

I refuse

Boots on my lips, burning embers all over my body

I refuse

Sharp whips, bloody backs, and alcohol poured on my back

I refuse

Electric shocks on my naked body, vile sexual torture

I refuse

Beating and beating to death, shooting with a revolver at the skull

I refuse

 

Poetry does not care about any obstacle

Poetry is armed, independent, and fearless.

Look at Mayakovsky, Hikmet, Neruda, Aragon, Eluard

We did not let your poetry lose

Instead, an attempt is being made to write a new epic across the country

All the poems are going to be composed in guerrilla rhythms.

Let the Madal roar-

A tribal village like a coral island

A field of indigo red in blood

A poison-foaming mouth of conch shell wounding the Titas

A poisonous, deadly, thirsty creature

The sun of Tankar blinded by the Gandiva's scythe

Sharp arrows, the most violent fruit-

Your spear is on your side

A shining spear, the throwing spear of the char-occupation

A blood-eyed Totem tribe to the rhythm of Madal

Guns, knives, and a lot of courage

So much courage that it is no longer afraid

There are also cranes, toothed bulldozers, and a procession of forest people

Again, moving dynamos, turbines, lathes and engines

The methane of the collapsing coal, eyes like hard diamonds in the darkness

Amazing steel hammers

Thousands lifted into the sky by the dock jute mill furnace hands

They don't fear

How strange the pale face of fear looks

When I know that death is nothing but love.

 

If you kill me

I will spread like a flame in all the earthen lamps of Bengal

I will not perish -

I will return from the earth year after year as a green hope

I will not perish -

I will live in happiness, in sorrow, in childbirth and at a funeral

As long as Bangladesh exists

As long as people exist.

Author's Bio



Navarun Bhattacharya (1948-2014) was a Kolikata based Banglaee writer. He was a novelist, column writer, magazine editor, and a cultural organizer. He has contributed more than ten publications. This poem has been taken from a poetry book, "This Valley of the Death, Not My Country" (Hoogly, Soptorshi, 2024) . He was honored Academy award for his novel, Herbert (Kolikata, Deis,1994). He was credited with a reputed lineage connections from both of his father and mother.  

Further Reading 

1. https://bengali.abplive.com/district/nabarun-bhattacharya-birth-anniversary-where-is-the-author-s-country-look-back-at-nabarun-bhattacharya-on-his-birthday-987326



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