Tasnima Rahman

“But surely every man is his own god: Fortune refuses her aid to those who merely pray, and take no action.”
― Ovid, The Fall of Icarus

“Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“বেঁচে থাকার মত আর কিছুই নেই। কত অপূর্ব সব দৃশ্য চারদিকে, মন দিয়ে আমরা কখনো তা দেখি না। যখন সময় শেষ হয়ে যায় তখনি শুধু হাহাকারে হৃদয় পূর্ণ হয়।”
― Humayun Ahmed, আগুনের পরশমণি

“Forgotten, as if you never were.
Like a bird’s violent death
like an abandoned church you’ll be forgotten,
like a passing love
and a rose in the night . . . forgotten

I am for the road . . . There are those whose footsteps preceded mine
those whose vision dictated mine. There are those
who scattered speech on their accord to enter the story
or to illuminate to others who will follow them
a lyrical trace . . . and a speculation

Forgotten, as if you never were
a person, or a text . . . forgotten

I walk guided by insight, I might
give the story a biographical narrative. Vocabulary
governs me and I govern it. I am its shape
and it is the free transfiguration. But what I’d say has already been said.
A passing tomorrow precedes me. I am the king of echo.
My only throne is the margin. And the road
is the way. Perhaps the forefathers forgot to describe
something, I might nudge in it a memory and a sense

Forgotten, as if you never were
news, or a trace . . . forgotten

I am for the road . . . There are those whose footsteps
walk upon mine, those who will follow me to my vision.
Those who will recite eulogies to the gardens of exile,
in front of the house, free of worshipping yesterday,
free of my metonymy and my language, and only then
will I testify that I’m alive
and free
when I’m forgotten!

~ tr. Fady Joudah”
― Mahmoud Darwish