After the Last Bath

Md Sajid Hossain

The notorious clouds have gathered round

After a prolonged racing.

Sun and summer departed and galloping lullabies

Spilled out of dark moistening tongues

Aching calls streamed from parched lips

Of my grief-stricken mother.

 

My kinsmen chanted through the mourning sky,

Step by step,

Bearing my slumber form,

Before some homeless quails

And some solemn gifts my ancestors gave –

Soon to be refashioned

By the hands of my cradled heir,

Who will inherit but sorrows and all that I could bear?

 

Then, I heard a muffled cry of my fair bride

A cry smothered carefully beneath her tear-soaked veil

and in her braid, bare of daffodil.

To her, I could not afford any breath

To give the word of my love.

With whom a promise of togetherness

Was soon to be broken forever.

 

Thirty six inches of five bamboo branches

Laid down just thirty inches from my lying posture.

I was watching attentively the sky being enigmatically rectangular.

My brothers, chafing creditors, and nosy bards of plastic poetry walked

Forty footsteps,

From my white-shrouded body,

For my esoteric interrogation to begun.

Not the steel-hearted teetotalers this time,

Only messengers of the divine: Munkar and Nakir.