Political scientist Ali Riaz is also a poet. The Samakal daily today published a poem of him. It touched our hearts. We are publishing a translated version of the poem on Rohingya refugees coming into Bangladesh.
Refugees on Boats
A l i R i a z
Float, stay afloat
Gulp, the luscious blood of your children
Swim over your own bloodstream
Hatred, suffering fire, burning…
Grasps the pastoral ridges of your bondage.
Village, the tremor, haunting!
The demon light
Finds ankle in the blood-
Look at your face
On the face of bayonets.
Behold,
Crimson red on the sharpest edge.
Is it your mother’s?
Flowing like a mountain spring,
Off from a chopped human body,
Where will you hide, O humanity?
Fly over the frontiers,
The shrewd eyes, evil mirth,
Of soldiers, wait, forever.
Thickened roads, witness hell.
Every step of your hide and seek.
Sky alone the bystander
You deny the deads
You, whatever is with you,
Dear ones, yourself
Float, stay afloat.
The enemy river currents,
The feeble dingy,
You must stay afloat.
Insane river water,
Uncertainty, or even the final passage
In every possible way, lost humanity floats.
Float, so you’re called ‘no one’.
You
Refugee,
Float, stay afloat.
(Translation by Taufique Ahmed)
