Editors’ Choice Top 5 English Poems

September 2020

I Carry You
By Maroon Moon

One word it takes to build me,
One smile it takes to look deep into you,
One stutter makes you come along to embrace me,
One frown makes you chuckle like a carefree child,
One tear it takes you to face the world for me.
They say love is blind,
To the world it may be so,
Only in each other we find gratitude,
In each other’s quietness we hear
a million unspoken promises of undying love,
Silently we pray,
Bravely we fight the odds to keep us alive.
Ask me how do I do it?
You are the reason I whisper.
I live in you the Moon shies away,
You in live in me the Heavens stand witness.
Your eyes speak of how truly I’m your
reason to make it all worthwhile.

Ephemera
By Hares Bin Nur

Nothing is permanent
In this life
Not even life itself.

Understanding it all
Yet just like a fool.
In searching of you
The wounds of losing with

Today I think even,
Why it is like pain,
Draw in heart
Blue butterflies, hundreds.

I could not revive,
Could not be yours
You have gone
On the way to light.

“Kill All You See”

By Sahat@Zia Hero Naing

Guns in hands, the mines in land
the check posts, the dark-green uniforms
the barbed wire fences across the border
All these are against the peace in Arakan

The troops of killers, and their ghost will
Mission to kill civilians
Operation to burn home and villages
Left nothing behind
Schools, Madarasas, Mosques, even Temples

Orders ”Kill All You See”
Children, adults, elderly, whomever..

Gang rape, mass graves
Left no one behind
Innocents, any Rohingya, and now Rakhines

The ashes, bones, bloods on ground
Arakan remains as the cemetery

A place calls for justice
The bullets witnessed the name of guns
Hope the ending is very close

A Nameless Slave
By Ró Àñàs

What a suffering in my life!
since childhood to youth
without right and dignity
to be rejected by my own name.

What a discrimination in my life!
since youth to old age
without justice and value
to be persecuted in my own land.

What a damnation in my life!
since old age to death
without freedom and identity
to be branded as a nameless victim.

Lives in Arakan

By Ro Anuwar Farook

What’s the life of living here,
With full of worries and fears
No sound sleep at night and
No peace of mind
Where we live in Arakan.

No rice to eat,
No future for children
No home in land
And no crops in farm
Where we live in Arakan.

What’s the life of living here,
Where a mother suffers raising a baby
Living around the flame of fire,
Nothing left to hold our heads up
This is our lives in Arakan.

Editorial Team

The Art Garden Rohingya