They Were Returning Home

Rezauddin Stalin

They were returning home—
Sometimes running, sometimes walking,
Cleaving through the chest of a river of melancholy,
They pressed forward.
The distance was vast, yet to them it felt
So agonizingly close.
From the world’s most celebrated cities,
They fled, carrying baskets laden with the words of dreams and memories.
Behind them lay the nuclear reactor,
Before them danced the thunderous woman.
Now and then, the waves reared their hooded crests,
Yet, heedless of it all, they ran, returning home.
Hidden deep within their chests was that priceless treasure

The homecoming ledger,
Its pages filled with the songs of freedom,
Dearest of all the world’s riches.
They ran with exhaled sighs;
Sometimes sprinting on their breasts, sometimes crawling on all fours.
Upon the screen of the horizon ahead,
Flickered the shadow-play of a century’s ignominy and shame.
Their eyes grew blurry.
The motherland, the beloved motherland, shrouded in darkness,
With only the fireflies of poetry as witness.
They were returning home, utterly alone—
The way Dante returned to his ancestral soil from Florence,
Madhusudan from Paris to Kolkata,
Lorca from New York to Andalusia,
Césaire from France to Martinique.
They had been returning home for how many years, no one knows,
Carrying an infinity upon their heads, they walked,
Stepping from star to star.
Perhaps for a hundred years,
Or perhaps a little longer.
They were returning home,
Cleaving through the chest of a river of fire,
Cleaving through the chest of a river of ice,
Cleaving through the chest of a river of blood.

Translated by – farzana naz Shampa