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New Exile Poems

By Tuhin Das

Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha

1.
I am a writer,
the light burns late
into the night in my room.
My friend cycles past my house on his way to work
at Casey Industrial Park at 4 AM.
When we meet he asks whether I could not
sleep last night because of thoughts of homeland. 

2.
In the album on the bookshelf was a photo of
my father and me together,
beside a yellow taxi.
Behind us, the departure terminal
of Dhaka International Airport.
A friend said,
‘‘Where’s your mother? You don’t exist without her.’’

3.
It is the rainy season in Bangladesh now.
Three out of four parts of my country
are under water.
Outside the City Council Building
I saw the other day a teenager holding,
all by herself,
an environmental placard.
She’s our representative.
She wants a world everyone can live in.
Come, let’s all go stand next to her.


 


 

 

Listen to a reading of New Exile Poems.

Added: Friday, November 8, 2024  /  Used with permission.
Tuhin Das
Photo by Art Heals Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

TUHIN DAS is a Bangladeshi poet currently living in Pittsburgh, PA. He edited several literary magazines. Over the last twenty-five years, his poetry criticism articles, short stories, and opinion columns have been published in the U.S., Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. He is the author of nine poetry books in his native language, Bengali. He is considered by critics to be a significant poet of Generation Zero and began publishing contemporary Bangladeshi literature in 2000. His life has been deeply impacted by Islamists. Carnegie Mellon University invited him to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a visiting scholar, and City of Asylum invited him to join their writer sanctuary program. He left his home country in 2016 and was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2021. Das’s work has appeared in Words Without Borders, The Bare Life Review, The Offing, Epiphany, and Immigrant Report. An interview with Das was featured in World Literature Today. Currently, he is looking forward to republishing his debut poetry book in the U.S., Exile Poems.

ARUNAVA SINHA is a noted Indian translator of Bengali literature. More than sixty of his translations have been published so far. Sinha is an associate professor of creative writing at Ashoka University in New Delhi, India.

Image Description: Tuhin Das stands with arms crossed in front of his former residence, Comma House, which has a mural he designed on the facade based on his concrete poem about his immigrant heritage and the Bengali alphabet. He wears a teal button up shirt with the sleeves cuffed mid-forearm. 

Other poems by this author