Sofiul Azam - Visiting a War Museum

(for Hasan Azizul Huq)


In shimmering heat I sweated, then slipped
into the cool of a War Museum at RU. Guards
sat around half the day, watching visitors

go from one gallery to another, myself awestruck –
how the seventies turmoil, rapes and killings
during my land’s labour pains came alive

on the things kept, telling what the monsters,
as Qumrul painted them, did. Rifles, exploded
shells