You grew up watching:
Birds open “The Sky Gate”
You, awakened by the dreams of
chirping fieldfare and rock pigeon,
seagull’s greetings from the Caspian Sea
Dimensions, unbounded
Bathing in photons and sucking light’s nectar,
the birds whispered to you:
Infinite freedom, unshackled
Who knows? Those birds, perhaps,
decoded the stars’ cryptic notes
and then swam in the love wave of freedom
Near the bank of the Dnieper by the reed forest,
perhaps, you played with the sands
perhaps, those tiny particles,
the river carried as loads,
ended up, with your touch,
in the carnival of endless water
This gloomy morning, I read,
you are dead
in the “Polar Wolf,” a Siberian Gulag
An absurd tyrant pierced your body
with poisoned knives
It could be a rumor
Could it be?
Are you dead?
I saw you by the lake next to my home
You lead a demonstration
of seagulls, grasshoppers, doves, and egrets
I heard the slogan
Freedom and freedom and freedom
Nothing but the freedom
It echoed through the universe
Dr. Mostofa Sarwar is professor emeritus and former associate provost at the University of New Orleans, dean and ex-vice-chancellor and provost of Delgado Community College. His opinion essays were published in The Daily Star and Bdnews24.com of Bangladesh, The Strait Times of Singapore, The Statesman of India, Phuket News of Thailand, The Times Picayune of New Orleans, The Advocate of Baton Rouge, The Acadiana Advocate of Lafayette, The Daily Advent and The Opera News of New York. Recently, his English poetry has appeared in Sangam literary magazine, The Seattle Star magazine, New Verse Newsonline literary journal, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart. Sarwar published three books of Bengali poems. He frequently participates in Bengali talk shows at cable TV channels (broadcast out of New York, Washington, DC, and Dhaka).