WEIRD WORLD OF JOY AND PAIN
by Mostofa Sarwar
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| AI-generated graphic for The New Verse News by Shutterstock |
I rode the Captain’s Float in Endymion
I saw the frolicking crowd
I enjoyed the rainbow of merriment
undulating its mesmerizing wings,
sprinkling its magical potions
over the revelers
The scintillating curves of human flesh
under the thin veneer of fabrics
The vile sound of the Second Amendment
flashing snippets of life
The dead crawling the crowded streets
I saw the specter of Paul Verlaine
over Saint Charles Avenue
He was catching beads
Was he happy?
He was wearing an MP3 player
Was he listening to Debussy’s incarnation
of his ‘Claire du Lune’?
Or was eternal pain eating his flesh
Like a deadly virus
I saw
Under the veil of merriment
New Orleans, like Bergamo,
hiding
the suffering,
and poverty, violence, injustice
Let me have a jug of absinthe
And forget this weird world of pain and joy
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 poems were published in Sangam Literary Magazine and The Seattle Star Magazine. Sarwar published three books of Bengali poems. He frequently appears in Bengali talk shows at cable TV channels (broadcast out of New York, Washington, DC, and Dhaka).