Stillness has spellbound trees till even birds won't perch.

Rivers too look sad, the exhausted earth only produces

Inedible mushrooms; no green things sprout anymore.

I don't get it--how could Rabindranath have this crazy desire

To be born again in Bangladesh as one of its trees?

No trees, no rivers, a time when flowers have stopped blooming.

No possibility of rebirth; everyone is against birth.

Listen, Rabindranath, even if I plant all your poems as seeds,

Taking care to water them night and day tirelessly

I am certain that the result will be zero--!

So barren is your Bangladesh, O Tagore!

An incessant wind; no words resonate anymore;

Only a bird or two perch on Ashwatha branches;

Timorously conversing with musical tunes;

On this rainless soundless twenty-fifth Boishakh!

Fakrul Alam is professor of English at Dhaka University.