My essay on a night drive in Bangladesh has been selected amongst the finalists in a travel essay competition. Click on the link below to read the story as well as a range of travel essays from other competing writers. Enjoy!
www.imustbeoff.com/2013/06/travel-essay-contest-entry-8.html?spref=tw
This week’s poem is a muse on certain words and misunderstandings, open to interpretation…
You’re not here
I call – it’s the wrong day
I looked the wrong way
You’re not here, things disappear
Biscuit in hot water
I ring – it’s the wrong floor
I tried the wrong door
You’re not here, you’re nowhere near
Smoke up a chimney
I search – it’s the wrong track
There is no way back
You’re not here, the view’s unclear
Mist on moonlit water
I knock – it’s the wrong place
Just a blank face
You’re not here, black buds of fear
Soil falling on a coffin
#morningtraffic – getting stuck behind the stinking garbage truck – hooting, revving, making haste in odorous clouds from city waste
Reshma is the young garment worker who was rescued after surviving 17 days in a collapsed building here in Bangladesh.
Today I read that Reshma is out of hospital, in good health, forgetting about her long ordeal in the basement of the collapsed building at Rana Plaza. She has been offered several jobs and taken one at a hotel near our house – I long to go and see her, though I can’t quite explain why. Perhaps I am too skeptical in my poem and it will turn out that her moment of fame after her terrible sufferings will be the start to a new life and new opportunities. I hope so. This poem is my own interpretation of her story, as best as I could make it out from news reports on the days after her rescue and from my little knowledge of life in Bangladesh.
Reshma
Reshma, my daughter; born under thatch
In a home with three goats and a vegetable patch
She took not much schooling but cooked rather well
She wandered the market with nothing to sell
She went with her sister to Dhaka for work
Sewed for small money, met some young jerk
Welcomed him innocent into her life
Thought it a glory to be someone’s wife
He wasn’t that bad, just an average man
But a man has his dreams and maybe a plan
Dowry tradition and social demands
Led to the end of her hopes for romance
Reshma, my pretty, has a sweet face
Not a bad figure; of average grace
Clever enough in illiterate ways
Worked passably well for very small pay
Reshma, the seamstress sewed for the west
She and her sisters doing their best
Sowing fine garments they’d not think to wear
Carefully saried with neatly oiled hair
Early one morning the factory fell down
Nine floors came tumbling with thunderous sound
Fell like a cake with the layers all piled
Down at the bottom lay Reshma, my child
Hours they past and the dust settled fine
Weeping and wailing was mixed with the crime
Reshma in darkness lay fearful of death
Death was at harvest, so much to collect
Under the rubble and ruins she lay
Surely they’ld rescue her after a day
Alone in her dungeon saving her tears
Trying with care to ration her fears
Reshma, Reshma the dying souls call
Bring us the rain, we hear that it falls
Reshma, Reshma, death knocked at her door
Reshma lay trembling, a prisoner of war
She heard sounds of clearing and tearing at walls
But nobody heard her or answered her calls
Seventeen days my girl spent in hell
Seventeen days and each hour as well
The clearing comes nearer, the hammers and shouts
Reshma swings feverish from hope back to doubt
A rescuer hears her, she taps metal poles
Down in the rubble with all the dead souls
They dig her out safely with hand tools and care
No one can believe that she’s actually there
They carry her tender, bring her to the light
Shedding real tears for her courage and fight
The whole world knows Reshma, a hero, a saint
All want to believe she’s a soul without taint
All want to see her, to hear her, to praise
To love and admire and see Rashma’s face
Reshma my daughter, she watches, quite calm
The fuss and attention can do her no harm
She’s wiser by now, knows nothing lasts long
This is her verse but it’s never her song
Writing poems sometimes gives a sense of lack of control, similar to dreaming. Odd things from different times and places in your life mix and hurtle off in unexpected directions, and you have little power to decide their destination. This poem is one of those times…
Dreams
Dreams are thoughts with the reins off, galloping through dim night
Eyes that burn the darkness, skin as pale as fright
Tearing through night’s hours, howling like lost wind
Clinging on white knuckled – and you’re slipping, slipping…
Hearing soundless footfalls, thunder that won’t speak
Hurtling up dark mountains, breathless at the peak
Wind that lifts you flying, feet that leave firm ground
Arms that cannot carry – and you’re falling, falling…
Remember, remember
The thing didn’t happen
The thought was a waterfall, cascading and calling…
Remember, remember
Embrace it, don’t fear it
The wind was a whisper, you’re ears didn’t hear it …
Run on into the scream, it’s not a scream of danger,
It’s not a scream of fright, just keep your eyes wide open
Not long until dawn’s light
After days and nights of rain the skies over Dhaka are washed blue, and the mornings lovely. This weeks poem is in praise of my favourite time of day.
Dawn
With a contented sigh darkness passes
Rolling over the edge of the landscape
Sleep follows yawning, clinging to his shirttails
For the sleepless, long lonely hours are over
Dawn has come at last
Peering distantly over far horizons
Peeping intimately through cracks
Playful fingers reaching through curtain threads
Distinctive fingerprints in floating dust fragments
Dawn gently claims us for the day
Tender light on morning eyes
Cobwebs brushed aside
Curtains flung wide to scatter gold across cold floor
Treetops tentative twittering bursts to full blown song
Dawn has come
Day has come
Again we live in light
And everything is blessed
This week’s poem is about my interesting and numerous neighbours in Dhaka, so resilient in the face of too many trials.
Dreams of my neighbours
Blocks bathed in moonlight, clocks way past midnight,
Alone on the rooftop I stand
Ten-million sleepers – ten-million deep breathers,
Exhaling heavy hot air
Their dreams light the night, and moon shares the sight
of pictures that grow in their sleep.
Girls dream in one voice of a groom of their choice,
handsome and moneyed as well
Bangles of gold, to have and to hold,
hoping his mother is kind
Old men still clutch tight to a dream of youth’s kite,
though storms snapped the string years ago.
Dream Ramadan fasting, that faithfulness lasting,
togetherness ends aching days,
with Iftari treats, date-flavoured sweets,
steaming rice piled high on plates
Mangoes and jack-fruits, end distant bus routes,
nostalgic Eid days out of town.
Stitchers dreams patterns embroidered for fashions,
slim fingers remember in sleep
How people would stare at the garments they’d wear,
if only they sewed for themselves
Exhausted young maid still learning her trade,
dreaming her mother is near.
Sleep clutching cheap phone, maybe son will call home,
His journey to help pay her bills,
he’s travelled to work and she’s proud he’ll not shirk,
but she’s missing his voice in the hall.
Drummers dream sounds that hard fingers will pound,
the heartbeats that binds all these lives.
Dreams of far places, sharp-nosed bearded faces,
names you have heard all your life,
the call of the Mullah, the dreaming of Mecca,
to fly there just once in your life
Praying to live right – every day and at night,
Inshallah your dreams will come true
In Dhaka, cyclone Mahasen comes to the hot city this morning with welcome gentle rain – we are grateful – but fear what else she has in store…
Roughness of Mahasen’s rain starts to gain – morning shower gaining power – morning breeze bullying trees – thoughts toss to the sea.
…
Rain washed city sky, morning wakes to bird song and blue sky. News is sad, but not so bad – expected much worse – thank Mahasen for small mercies.
This week’s poem talks about events of the last few weeks in Dhaka. Events which will have far reaching repercussions for an industry, for a country and unimaginable repercussions for tens of thousands of lives. The collapse of the building at Rana Plaza in Savar gave us stories of horror, heroics and hope in the first few days. But as the days passed the only real news was the body count, increasing day by day.
Surely it is enough now.
Enough now
They are holding up photographs of their missing loved ones.
They are scratching helplessly,
hopelessly, at the rubble.
Ran down long corridors,
roof was caving in.
Banged on metal doors
locked for safety on all floors.
Crawled on all fours,
no way out.
Hold onto each other.
Hold out your ID card for your mother,
so she’ll know it is your body when you’re found.
Is he the one they found alive?
Is she the one who had her hand amputated to free her from the rubble?
Are some still alive in there, in that mountain of concrete suffering?
Enough now – just give us her body so we can say goodbye.
The only breadwinner ;
old woman crying alone for her only daughter,
someone takes her picture, published in the press.
Who cares?
They were from some village, they were nobody.
Just a body.
They are praying
They are hoping
They are crying
They are dead
They are all dead now.
The number keeps rising,
The daily count
700, 800…
15 days and 1000 dead.
Enough now.
Enough.
The incompetent
The careless
The greedy
The corrupt
Can we please stop now?
Is this not the limit of cheap labour,
when the cheapness becomes too dear,
when the lowness of the price is too high a price to pay.
Why not give a damn, think a bit,
share a little of your abundance .
When you buy so damn cheap
who pays?
Now you know the answer – spelt out in nine floors and 1000 dead bodies
In uncounted lives ripped and torn like old garments
Enough now, it doesn’t have to be that cheap.
Enough.
The powerless
The poor
The women
The girls
They didn’t want to slave for peanuts,
they just want a chance to earn.
They didn’t plan to lose their lives and limbs
or see their work mates burn.
Enough now.
Enough
This week something quite different. Just poetry and imagination with no claim that I’m inspired by current events. With a nudge from my on-line writers group, Writer’s Abroad, and some inspiration from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his poem the ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, this week’s poem borrows the first two lines from that epic poem, and then wonders off to some unknown place….
.
.
Water, water everywhere….
…
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink
Across white sand, across high dunes
Our heavy feet still sink
The waves upon the shore did beat
The sun a hammer pounding heat
Nor any drop to drink
…
Nor clouds we saw, nor birds, nor green
No nature blessed our eye
Across the miles, along the shore
The sun beat from the sky
The sound of water in our ears
The sound of silence fed our fears
No Nature blessed our eye
…
We dared not leave the cursed splash
We dared not desert cross
But miles of water, bitter salt
No thirst away could wash
The heat, the shimmering, hazy light
Oasis rises in our sight
We dared not desert cross
…
We curse our life, we curse our luck
To wash from storm to shore
To live through drowning in the sea
And then to die once more
We curse survival, curse the waves
Curse the fate to which we’re slaves
To wash from storm to shore