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Those Iron Gates of Prison

[Karar oi louho kopat]

Kazi Nazrul Islam

Translation: Sajed Kamal

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Destroy those iron gates of prison,
demolisth the blood-stained stony altars
of chain worshipping!
O youthful Shiva,
blow your horn of universal cataclysm!
Let the flag of destruction
rise amidst the rubble of prison walls
of the East!!
Play the music of the festival of Shiva!
Who's the master? Who's the king?
Who is it
that punishes the truth of freedom?
Ha! Ha! Ha! It's a laugh--
God is to be hanged?
Rumor-monger--
who teaches this pitiful "trugh"?
O you forgetful Madman --
shake -- shake the prisons
with your forceful cataclysmic pulls!
Send your Haidari call,
play your war-drums--
call Death
towards Life!
There, the Baishakhi storm is dancing--
are you just going to sit through your days?
Let's see
you shake up the foundation
of that terrible prison.
Kick - break the locks!
All those prisons--
set them on fire,
burn them down, uproot them forever!
Courtesy: Sajed Kamal. Kazi Nazrul Islam: Selected Works [Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, p 128; 1999]