The Eternal Song
I celebrate myself—
I draw into myself all humanity
And sing in solidarity with my sisters
A song spread across the horizons
Seamlessly interweaving the glittering shards
Of sinuous shifting images—
It is as if a magic lantern threw the nerves
In patterns across a screen:
Bold intellectual women gaze across the sundering seas
To receive the wisdom of the sages
The magic mantra of mystic mages
Beckoning to liberation from constricting chains
Leading them to the Promised Land, free of pain—
"Ring out old things, Ring in the new
Discard all inhibitions, and dance in the dew"
But patriarchal power still circulates
Like old wine in new bottles—
The mythical land recedes with each advance
Like a mirage in the desert
And dreamers wander lost
In the intoxicant induced world of illusion
Borrowed metaphors dictate the need for whiteness
To the fair and lovely damsel
Waiting for her knight in shining armor,
While the dancing body of the more daring beauty
Confidently adorns billboards and buses
And magazines venerate the glittering goddess
Worshipped at the altar of freedom and progress:
"Attractive eye candy" says the wolf whistling chauvinist
Gazing at sashaying forms on revolving ramps;
"Brainless featherheads" snorts the disgusted feminist
Staring in disgust at the glittering figures
Arrayed to display the eternal weapons
Of the world of fashion and beauty
"Seductive and sexy" says the envious housewife
Stuck in the world of dusters and dishes;
But night brings its own reality
To tired faces in empty hotel rooms
When the make-up mask is bared
And whispered stories are shared
By women uncertain and scared
Of market rates and marriage rites
Botox fillers and bitter fights—
See-saw desires, despair-laden discourses
Of dazzling denizens of a deceptive domain
Sung, celebrated, used, abused
And confused.
But who are those shadowy figures seen in the distance?
The draped invisible veiled women;
Convention dictates that they be
Constantly derided, discussed and dismissed
As repressed, humiliated and oppressed
Static and silent, backward and depressed
Always represented and never self-expressed—
Where is their voice in poem, and song?
Are all tunes the same? Do all words tell the same story?
Whose gaze privileges? Who speaks the language of power?
Whose discourse is dominant? Who decides to bestow
The defining epithets on female forms—
'Smoldering' and 'Fiery'
'Dull' and 'Dreary'?
A foreign tongue it is that speaks
A manacled metaphor it is that seeks
To forever fit square pegs in round holes.
My voice it is that breaks
That endless silence with an eternal song
I need no borrowed feathers to dress me
Or an alien language to express me
I resist reductive generalizations
Poetry pours from the pores of my being
Mesmerized by the mystic melodious music
I sing of ageless sexless souls
Flood engulfed in God's gaze
Self surrendered in the song of God's beauty.
Batool Sarwar is Associate Professor of English at the
University of Dhaka.
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