Nothing stays, you see--
leaves and flowers, village elders
the dancing figure of a river,
brass pitchers and the spark of fire
on a hubble-bubble, swarmes of young girls-all dwindle
like the dwindling hilsa season.
Yellow leaves fall with a rustle on rainless parched earth,
and alien ducks from strange lands,
their bodies like a million bubbles,
vanish in the sky's blue bowl,
Why does not anything last?
Corrugated and thatched roofs or mud walls,
the impregnable village banyan tree --
all go with Chittagong's vicious tornado,
even as plasters on builcings crack.
At last the local mosque, too,
comes down crashing in a heap like our mighty faith.
Sparow's nests, love creepers and book-covers
crumple and disintegrate.
The green shriek of crops, stretching to the horizon, goes on trembling,
bit by the waters of the Meghna,
Cowsheds, pots and pitchers,
floating huts, old embridered pillows
soft as an elder sister's affection ---
all flow down.
Finally nothing is left of the home.
Only a few water-loving birds fly above,
wiping away from then beaks the froth of the wind.
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