Summer Dreamers (Lyrics in Blues)

 

Our days pass by

Our days are just passing by

In bread without butter.

And there are nights;

We come home late

To skip the supper.

 

And we hear the news of NASA

And we hear the news of NASA

Ploughing Mars for water.

 

And we go to bed

In the winter slope;

With our dormant dreams lay covered

With the light of hope,

Our light of hope getting dark and shuttered.

 

We are common people;

Like unnoticeable;

We are just common after all;

And we make quarrels and make noises

For a pinch of salt,

 

And we all summer dreamers

Hear the news of NASA

We hear the news of NASA

Ploughing Mars for water…

 

We leave our lives

Way behind the wood

Just way behind the wood

For a meager livelihood.

And we keep a smile on our face;

On our face: dry, real and bold.

 

Our lives are passing by

In bread without butter

And we hear the news of NASA

Ploughing Mars for water…

 

© Atique R.

This lyrics in Blues is based on my poem The Forgotten Clan. It’s still awaiting a music company for human production. 

Raindrops (Lyrics in Blues)

 

Raindrops keep falling on my head.

Raindrops keep falling on my head,

Along the lonely dancing road,

I will keep just walking...

In the music of raining

Without running into any open shed.

 

Raindrops keep falling on my head.

I have got some more tears to shed;

My eyes, needing a cover,

With some memories flowing over,

I have got some more tears to shed.

Raindrops keep falling on my head.

 

Raindrops keep falling on my mind

Raindrops keep falling on my mind

I wanna soak in

With the dusts gonna give in

From making my soul dumb blind.

Raindrops keep falling on my mind

 

Raindrops keep falling on my eyes

Raindrops keep falling on my eyes

I wanna mine my memory lanes

With the spears of raining

And the blackbirds' singing

For shedding off all my lies…

Raindrops keep falling on my eyes.

 

Raindrops keep falling on my head.

I have got some more tears to shed;

My eyes needing a cover,

With some memories flowing over,

I have got some more tears to shed.

Raindrops keep falling on my head.

 

©Atique R.

This lyrics in the Blues is based on my poem, Raindrops from Heaven. It’s still awaiting a music company for human production. 

A Moon Blanched Night (Lyrics)

 

A dawning day

With a drizzling bliss

Hitting the coffee

With a morning kiss.

Got a job in hand

To find something.

In the Moon blanched night

I lost something.

 

I lost some lines

I dreamt last night

In the glimmering glow

Of the dangling light.

With a full glass of wine

With some Moon drops fine

I had a lovely vision

I lost last night…

 

I lost something

I lost some lines

In the glimmering glow

Of the moon blanched night

I lost the flow

To paint your eyes

In a clouded blue

And a maddening light…

 

I was painting dreams

In the lovely lunar streams

When you came along

As a flash of light,

In the moon blanched night

And I lost the vision

And I lost all my light

In the dream I lost

In a pair of eyes…

 

© Atique R.

This lyrics is based on my poem A Dawning Day. It’s still awaiting a music company for human production, but you can listen to the sample version, which I really love to listen to, in my YouTube channel or in my Instagram account. 

The Zahir I Met in Love and Delusion

 

It was such a lovely

Monsoon morn,

Fervently poised to pen

My long awaited poem

On love and its delusion,

After such a long hiatus

In a dew drenched sojourn;

But intuition intertwined

With a pair of eyes

Slashed through my

Bleeding heart

Like every other dawn:

All the withered words

In the clouded vision,

Left my empty manuscript

Looking so helplessly forlorn,

With all my self-drawn delusion,

With the severed wings

Of all my flustering imagination-

My zahir played a part though,

Like in a desert,

With the mirage of an ocean.      

 

I left my manuscript too,

Taking resort to the prosaic wanderings along the chameleon clouds over the ridges of a mountain, feeling the droplets of rains passing through my unwinged imagination; but the shrouds never drizzled down. The dawns kept coming on and on… And then I came across a night with a moon…

 

It was such a lovely

Blooming moon,

Weaving beauties

With the wild blue petals

Along a lonely

Secluded lawn;

Echoing couplets

Of a melancholic epic

Floating around

In the ashen blue sky

Of my raining heart.

But, they were all gone,

All on a sudden,

Like a spectrum

In a mid-summer illusion:

Swept away

By a November wind

From the north end.

 

And I knew it’s time to head for the North, for the nomadic way in search of my zahir that I met once in a godforsaken island in one of my dreams; or may be in a devil-may-care inter-section with a parallel dimension. And it’s where the Meghbalika I chanced to have painted got stuck into my wayward imagination. A pilgrimatic expedition is all I need to stop my soul erosion or to find myself back again in the downtown, may be by saying aloud all my untold stories, giving way to the new ones to be sewn. But, the zahir I lost my poem in is my love with all its delusion:

 

Oh Sir, she smiled sometimes

For whatsoever reason

To stir up the whole Pacific Ocean;

Which had nothing to do with me-

But my heart somehow reached

At the centre of the whirlpool

With the fins of my befooling imagination. 

 

Then there was the kind of look:

Could have easily pierced through

The heart of any bohemian fellow

Like the arrows of Apollo;

Which I thought to be meant for mine-

Which I thought to be from Cupid

With a suddenly discovered passion.

 

And sometimes those fireballs from the eyes:

I could easily interpret them to be

The outburst of emotion;

But, never could I imagine

The feelings I dreamt to be reciprocal

Were just the reflection

Mirrored by my own obsession.

 

But I can feel the rain and feel her

Like the flow of a monsoon;

I can keep walking in the drizzling

With a cup of coffee

And some freshly woven dreams,

And I feel her walking by me

Like the flow of a flaming infatuation:

 

That’s how the zahir and the Esther

Keep coming in together;

And I know both the delusion

And the zahir have to disappear

For the love to paint even deeper;

For an unfinished poem to reach a harbour;

For all the blissful pains to savour. 

But the love with all its delusion

Just want to glide on with the lotus-eaters;      

With the zahir and its obsession…

But, it’s time for the nomadic way,

It’s time to rend, and it’s time to sew:

Winters are long, and Ithaca is still far away…

 

© Atique R.

*The poem is inspired by the Paulo Coelho novel, The Zahir.

I Came to This World with an Endless Leisure

 

I was born with all the time of the world-

I’m one such a happy-go-lucky poet;

I’ve bathed my body in the sea,

All alone in the darkness;

I’ve loved the colored sunlight,

I’ve wandered around the weary autumn field,

In the laps of green like a grasshopper.

I’ve seen a teenage girl plucking yellow rhododendron:

Her red wet dress draping her chest,

Echoing a melancholic tune of a conch.

 

The sky in the morn is bloomed

By the flocks of swans: their new songs

Trigger the new dawns-

The pink waves of the river talk a lot-

And they keep murmuring all along;

Yet their words are never devoured by the winter fog.

Someone sitting in the petals of a painted cloud,

Is listening to everything-

Or no one is listening at all;

Everything fades out in the blank mist.

 

I too will be wiped out one day like a spectrum;

And yet I sit on the green grass; fall in love;

Wait in a solitary seclusion for the sounds of footsteps,

With the yearnings of her love; collect the wild plums-

I’m supposed to give them to someone.

One can sit for hours on this soft grass,

Alone, with all such dreams;

And when it will be the time to sleep,

I will close my eyes. 

 

© Atique R.

It’s a translation of the Bengali poem, ‘Ei Prithibite Ami Obosor Niye Sudhu Asiachi,’ by Jibanananda Das.

If I Get an Eternal Life

 

If I get an eternal life,

If I can go on walking alone

On the paths of earth forever,

I will watch how the leaves grow green;

I’ll see how they turn pale and go off the scene;

I’ll behold how the sky becomes white in the dawn,

And is drawn to dusk with a reddish hue on its chest,

Like the blood splash of a slain munia.

I’ll be able to meet the stars, again and again;

I will see an unknown girl going away

With her hair freed from a loosely locked bun:

Her face missing the comely touch of twilight. 

         

If I really get a life without an end,

If I can roam around the roads of the world,

Alone, for eternity-for a time without bend-

I will see countless trams, buses and dust;

I’ll see bunches of slums, huts, swampy lanes,

Broken chillums and urns;

I will see quarrels here and there.

I’ll watch street fights, squint eyes, rotten shrimps-

And countless other things,

I won’t be able to put into words.

And still I won’t be able to see

A glimpse of you

In my eternal life,

Ever again.  

 

© Atique R.

It’s a translation of the Bengali poem, ‘Ononto Jibon Jodi Pai Ami,’ by Jibanananda Das.

If I Were a Wild Swan

 

‘If I Were a Wild Swan’ is a translated poem, with a slight change from the original one (Ami Jodi Hotam) by Jibanananda Das, the pioneer of the modern Bengali poetry, the uncrowned maestro of mind-stunning metaphors: my first love like millions of Bengali readers who like to read a couple of lines from a poem, sometimes in a lonely leisure on a rainy day or on a moon blanched night or in a winter morn or anytime anywhere with a hot cup of tea or without. His works have got an undeniable impact on readers or poetry lovers, avid or nonchalant, who can neither feel nor deny that there is something to be indulged in, there is definitely something to be lost with an outpour felt deep inside in the life on the other end of the reality.

Ami Jodi Hotam (If I Were) was translated into English by the poet himself and was published in the 1945 anthology of Modern Bengali Poems. However; I have never had the opportunity to go through that version of the poem. But, I did dare, may be for my love for the poet and for the imagery, to try my own version with a little change as I didn’t feel like bringing along another swan to be shot down…

 

If I Were a Wild Swan

If I were a wild swan

In a quiet nest,

Deep inside a swamp bush,

Close to a wheat field,

By a calm, rainy river

By the end of a horizon;

 

On such a night of spring

With the moon rising above the cedar woods,

I would glide along the silvery crops in the sky,

Leaving behind the lure of the maddening smell

Of warm water of the marshes-

 

With my feathers feeling the touches of your wings;

My wings in the beats of your veins-

A million stars glowing the deep blue sky,

Like the golden flowers flaming the wheat field;

With the March Moon looking like a golden egg

In the green furry nest of maple grove.

The sound of a sudden gunshot:

My diagonal fall,

With the joy of ecstatic piston on my back,

And the songs of the north wind in my tone!

 

May be the second gunshot:

My stunned silence,

My peace.

There wouldn’t be the fractions of death anymore

Like the life we are dragging on…

There wouldn’t be any burden of despairs

With the unfulfillment of our little hopes,

There wouldn’t be any darkness, either;

If I were a wild swan,

By a calm, rainy river

By the end of a horizon,

Close to a wheat field…

 

 

© Atique R.