Prof. Fayeza Hasanat, USA (Winging through Gloom: Poetry of Hope and Recovery)

Fayeza Hasnat

Dr. Fayeza Hasanat, author, academic, and translator, completed her MA and PhD in English  from the University of Florida. She is the author of Nawab Faizunnesa’s Rupjalal: Translation and Commentary and The Voices of War Heroines: Sexual Violence, Testimony, and the Bangladesh Liberation War. Her debut short story collection, The Bird Catcher and Other Stories, was simultaneously published from the USA and Bangladesh. Hasanat teaches at the English Department of the University of Central Florida.

 

 

HOPE

                       

Brown pine needles, awakened by the wind

Flying, like birds, on their flimsy wings

Falling, like rain, from the sky made of pines

Landing, on the ground, amidst the white snow

Unwinged, unleashed, from the tree, its home,

Yet sticking out, defiant and stout, like hope.

 

I saw a woman in Boston Common

Standing, with her feet buried in snow

Waving—a flag of yellow and blue.

Unrooted, she can’t go back where

Fathers lie dying and mothers die holding

Their babies in the safety of their wombs.

A war at home raged a war in her heart

With the pole of her flag, she fought the wind

Like a warrior of hope.

 

She stood with a crowd of yellow and blue

And all other colors: white, black, purple, and brown

They stood like trees, defiant and undead

With their roots sticking out of the snow,

Like pine needles, stout and dauntless.

Their flags soared in the wind, like wind

Smearing the sky with yellow and blue

The color of hope. 

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Setu, March 2022