Hayat Saif
Hayat Saif Poems
From the suddenly swollen seasonal clouds
Ceaseless rain falls
In unending streams it comes pouring down
Onto our present barren soil.
...
From behind the still vibrant foliage one can see
The crunching edges of the saw
A humming shaft of sound.
...
For a long time with unbound bent eyes
With folded supplicating hands
Am ceaselessly meditating only you
Your nature in an amorphous assurance
...
How much can these swollen veined
Bony quivering hands contain
When I am bedeviled by the scorched gray
of an impersonal ominous landscape all around?
...
My mother is now asleep under
the cold soil of Hetom Khan's graveyard.
I hear now, in this town live a million people,
But I never see my mother anymore.
...
Rising up dropp by dropp from the ocean
Water comes down in torrents form the mountains
Though the plateau on the plains
Gushing forth and tearing down the ramparts of stones,
...
If you can, ventriloquist,
Make this blabbing city
Cry.
...
Inside my very birth
my death exists.
Within my distance sleeps
My innocent nearness.
...
When darkness falls
And night deepens, you are far away
I can no longer see you
But then distances disappear
...
She, who I love
Never presents herself through surrender
Indeed she never gives herself,
Never drops with exhaustion
...
It was a piteous day of tears
And of mute fascination hour after hour.
Leaves falling in a frame of pensive mood.
Wordless message carved on tremulous lips
...
Spontaneous - intimate obscurity
Suddenly an enlightened certitude trifles
Deep inside, the mind spreads out the landscape
Wide meadows, a quick gush of green
...
Not love, hate or ambition
but something else deep
Fluctuates like the mercury of a barometer
In my middle-aged soul.
...
There were human beings then,
And spreading green, and rebellion,
The journey of time,
...
Often when I hear your rhymed words,
I can touch your inner nature
Just through your words?
...
All around one can witness
Many high-ranking and garrulous asses –
Occasionally worthy, but always affecting wisdom –
Here, these clamorous men live.
...
You didn't give him any respite. The warrior's shield
Has been robbed. You didn't give him
With your fearless hand, a rifle, a Sten-gun
Or some ethereal grief,
...
Grazing life's horizon I voyage
Towards another circle
Endlessly impulsive place
Love around tortured wrists
...
Habitation frighten me,
I would rather renounce the habit
And the house in which
I once felt quite at home,
...
Hayat Saif Biography
Hayat Saif (Bengali: হায়াৎ সাইফ) is a twentieth century modern Bengali poet and literary critic from Bangladesh. A career bureaucrat, he retired in 2000 and since then is engaged in the corporate private sector and divides his time in World Scouting and literary and artistic pursuits. He has been translated in English and Spanish and, in Bangladesh, is generally acclaimed as an intellectual interpreter of contemporary life and culture. Born in 1942 as Saiful Islam Khan he assumed this pen name in 1961 when contributing to literary journals. Early life and Career He was born to Moslem Uddin Khan and Begum Sufia Khan in 1942. After high school, he studied English literature and obtained his M. A degree in 1965. After graduation, he taught in colleges for about three years and then joined the Pakistan Superior Service in the Finance cadre in 1968. He was involved in the revenue administration and tax policy making for more than three decades. He acted as Chairman of the National Board of Revenue and retired in 1999. In early 1960s, still a student, he worked as a casual announcer and newscaster in the Dhaka centre of the then Radio Pakistan and later in Pakistan Television at Lahore Center. He still continues his interests in broadcasting and telecasting and anchors literary programmers and talk shows. Works He is one of the major poets of Bangladesh belonging to the generation of 1960s who set a clear trend of modern poetry in Bangladesh along with such poets as Rafiq Azad, Asad Chowdhury, Mohammad Rafiq, Abdul Mannan Syed, Rabiul Hossain, Imrul Chowdhury and others. His publications in Bengali include eight collections of poems apart from two collections of essays and a huge number of poems and articles published in various periodicals. One of his important books is titled Pradhānata Māṭi o Mānusha. His collection of literary essays Ukti o Upalabdhi was published by Shilpataru in 1992. In 2004, he jointly with Mahbub Talukdar compiled and published A Selection of Contemporary Verse from Bangladesh. His latest collection of poems Prodhanoto Smriti ebong Manusher Pathchola (Mainly memories and man's path-walking) published in 2009 contains fifty seven poems "woven in a fine thread of thought". Works in translation There are two collections of some of his prominent poems in English rendition. One of these is Voice of Hayat Saif edited by Faizul Latif Chowdhury, published by Dibya Prakash in 1998. It contains forty-five poems translated by different hands. The volume titled Hayat Saif: Selected Poems was published by Pathak Samabesh, Dhaka, in 2001. The poems included in this volume have been translated by different hands. Fiscal Frontiers In 1993, he launched a periodic journal under the title Fiscal Frontiers. He edited it until 2000. Fiscal Frontiers was focused on revenue policy and administration, fiscal policy and international trade. ICE He is working as the Managing Editor of a magazine titled Information Communication and Entertainment, ICE in short, since 2005. This monthly is published from Dhaka. Quotes In spite of all the innovations, verse is still verse as differentiated from prose pieces. Music is the basic attribute of the language of poetry that differentiates it from other forms. The idea of perfection itself suggests that the condition is not achievable, at best not in the physical sense. I don't know really, why I write poetry. I suppose I write poems because I have to; because I have nothing better to write. Poetic style His poetic fervour emerged when he was a student of grade-VIII. In 1962, his first poems published appeared in the literary periodical Shomokal edited by Sikander Abu Zafar. In writing poetry, his preferred metrical style in 'Okkherbritta' or 'Poyer', which is the most popular among modern Bengali poems. He is prone to use Bengali language words of Sanskrit origin. Scouting He has been involved in national and international Scouts movement since early 1990s. He has been the National Commissioner of Bangladesh Scouts for a long time and has been awarded Bronze Wolf, the most prestigious decoration of World Scouting for outstanding contribution to the international movement. Publications There are two collections of some of his prominent poems in English rendition. His publications in Bengali include eight collections of poems apart from two collections of essays and a huge number of poems and articles published in various periodicals.)
The Best Poem Of Hayat Saif
Rain
[Tragic death of Mahima: Eight-year old girl falls into an open manhole in A street covered with water from the torrential rain and is swept away. Her Body was recovered the following day from the Buriganga River. A news item in Dainik Ittefaq, 8th June, 1984.]
From the suddenly swollen seasonal clouds
Ceaseless rain falls
In unending streams it comes pouring down
Onto our present barren soil.
Washing the water-color from the brush of
Qayum Choudhury
Rain falls from the thick clouds of Ashaar
Black clouds from the ink of Samiran's clay ink pot
Gather, touching
and washing the black, water-color rain
falls in the mind
Within human memory endless rain falls
lyric rain falls
Gita Govinda rain falls
Meghadut rain falls in the mind.
Down the slopes of dreams onto
The deserted plateau of solitude.
Rushing to the sonorous valley of
deep personal mourning
golden rain falls
kike the sound of raga Megh Malhar
like first love
On the first day of Ashaar
Crickets whisper at night in trees
over the grass onto field.
on verandas on window-panes flooding rain falls
the enchanted pictures of past days
All the pleased faces.
are drenched and melted and dropp down
the drowsing window's glass
today on this first day of Ashaar.
and suddenly, unnoticed in the city of
air-conditioned offices, too, rain
falls in big drops
Then ceaseless water on the highways in the drains
in the damp dirty lanes
on the moss of the walls, in black, in green
in blue, flood water comes down
the Mayurakshi River;
On the slums spread out to touch
The skyscrapers of Gulshan and Banani
thrown-away torn up letters, paper, account books,
discarded boxes, broken bangles go speeding
on the murmuring water currents
at random on the flowing stream's face;
on road and manhole alike water rises inch by inch.
in the sudden gush
Of a massive stream.
On village, on granary, on field, on barren soil suddenly
tumultuously rain
pours down
No tax - collector today has reached their destination;
In such rain as this there is no traffic anywhere;
even the police are truants.
Shilabhadra once loved this earth
Mahima too, a thousand years later
With pendant nose-ring
In the city of luxurious wealth and of
rubbish-dump slums
Like this mother earth too once loved us perhaps
When the flooding rain fell and covered the whole road
and the open manhole alike
Mahima too went floating far away
in the terrible current's force
to the open hungry belly
of the Buriganga.
Here under the tropic of Capricorn
For a thousand years humanity and nature have
bargained with each other,
and on the first day of Ashaar rain falls
In the day's middle hours;
from black clouds
covering all the sky like swollen blackberries
with split lightning.
covering the concrete skyline on the hazy horizon,
in the last quarter of the century
Matchless rain falls in the mind.
falls down the slopes of the Chittagong hills
on the crests of the salt sea's waves
rain falls and falls.
surrounding the crowd of memory
dark rain falls on Ashaar's first day
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