My Absence

In the sultry air of March yawns my absence.
Who knew even the year's last Sunday would pass in such alienation?
Still I do not come back: flowers from your bun wither and fall off on your back. 
Taking away the tea-making paraphernalia, you think whether 
you should change the saree and keep lying in the southern room downstairs.
And I have put on the attire of promise-breakers
as if I forgot everything, as if I never promised to anybody,
'I'm coming back. Stay indoors. We two will sit together on the veranda.'

A blurred memory still haunts my mind:
a woman sometimes used to wear a saree as I liked her to;
she used to become a river, laughing, 
because I love rivers;
when I tried to make her understand the enigmas of nature,
and when I said, 'If you were a tree –,'
hearing this, she, all at once, used to say,
'Look!', spreading out all her branches.
Today I have put on the attire of promise-breakers,
and my absence yawns in the sultry air of March.

Md. Elias Uddin is a Lecturer in the Department of  English at Dhaka University.