The Ramna Green: My Boyhood Haven:
“Thus far, O Friend! Have we, though, leaving much
Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace
The simple ways in which my childhood walked;
Those chiefly that first led me to the love
Of rivers, woods, and fields………………………
A tranquilizing spirit presses now
On my corporeal frame, so wide appears
The vacancy between me and those days
Which yet have such self-presence in my mind,
That, musing on them, often do I seem
Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself
And of some other Being.”
-The Prelude: Book II- William Wordsworth
“And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, ……………..”
“All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.”
“Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
Fern Hill- Dylan Marlais Thomas
I enjoyed a fabulous boyhood and youth in the lap of Ramna Park from 1982 to 2000, when my tender imagination kept fluttering its wings. I had been frequently visiting and playing football and cricket (even during the rains and storms), and would cycle around the park several times. What a free, frequent, and abundant time it was! Nowadays, a Dhaka boy cannot think about it. What I had left in and around the ‘Gomoti’ river, I immediately found in the lap of a quiet place. The Ramna Green (park) is the lifeline and virtually the prime oxygen provider, a piece of jewel amid the hobnobbing of a bustling and boisterous city. No doubt in my subconscious mind since then, a wayfarer had been crumbling impatiently to ramble. The age-old trees, plants, foliage, creepers and flowers always provided a sense of Eden, and it has always been a place of harmony and cultural activities to uphold thousands of years of ancient Bengali culture and tradition
Thirty years ago, I wrote a Bengali poem moved by emotion and experience based on my trampling in each and every corner of the park. But it was a very early stage of writing poetry when I mostly focused on collecting and creating imagery from nature. Here is the translation of the poem in brief, though, the context, content, texture, intensity, and emotion can never be conveyed or paralleled, considering imagery, simile, symbols, and other figures of speech.
DISSOLUTION
-Lutful Haider Mahiuddin
Moment embeds upon the evening, resting its limbs idly…
The most frivolous woman of the city adorns her face to invite the darkness…..
Immediately, it seems the condensed yellow adornment favoured by the jaundiced light
Has been cajoling for eternity…
When time serves kings and queens
Teapots grow tamarind.
Faces of cigars bite time and again, the most favoured attire and
After the last sip, the cold leftover tea reminds me of an uncertain time that mingles with twilight
As the tea gets mixed with sugar and milk.
Tried to be courageous beside the tuberose plant, as your body derives carnal desire from its scent
Measuring the length and periphery of your evening walk.
Observing a failed bid to search for cinnamon in an imaginary pine forest
You laughed tirelessly like a cascade and threw ashes, and said
“Look how the ashes do evaporate…
Life will evaporate like that.”
Life passes fluently
Who are you and I
But those ashes of eternity?
Life passes profusely by, knitting silver traps of whimsical bliss
From cradle to grave with delight and misery, satisfied and dissatisfied tongues…
Dared to drown the whole sleepless night in a teacup for counting numerous stars,
Floating cotton gradually transformed into waves of innocent clouds.
The tincture of those floating waves has been dragging me into those unwritten chapters of boyhood…
Drenched in rain and sun,
That age-old Banyan tree, where it has always been amusing to seek refuge;
Suddenly, the habitation seized and gave birth to an unknown realm
As it disappears
At the unbeatable velocity of my bare feet.
Then the sandy domain wriggled to that naked river
And seeing it, I fluttered my wings as a thirsty swan;
Who, for many centuries, has been waiting eagerly for the swelling of deep water to float river from river
But failed and drowned in nothing but pitch-black water, grabbing those kindred white clouds.
Autumn never invited you to let your hair break free
like the blue sky, you abruptly disappeared in that immeasurable darkness of city life
Swept by some enigmatic and forbidden wealth.
So, I resorted to the trunk of that Banyan tree
Submerging the everlasting dream of an entire boyhood
To a naive childhood again, where green grass hints at the evolution of a fertile village
Who derives pleasure in collecting Lotus flowers
Adorned with an emerald sari;
Summon a fantastic festival of children being involved in the monsoon.
Where that age-old tree embraces its beloved with its profuse love
Like the most trusted lover on earth
Where, on a rare day, the eyes of a thousand fireflies reflect vibrantly
Upon the tender leaves of a banana tree.
Since by that time, I discovered the stark reality
Of Jasmine flowers being ravaged repeatedly and withered by the mightiness of stubborn muscles of a brick-prone, dusty city.
So I sought refuge again to dissolve and dissolve like liquid white lime
Being blessed beneath a thousand-year-old full flowering moon.