Response to “Sultana’s Dream”
Walk With Me
A poem.
Waking or sleeping
I know not.
Only that with someone I know and trust am I walking.
Dare I walk in the open with you, friend? My sister?
The moon shines bright as my spirits rise
and trusting, I emerge.
Suddenly, change.
No moon, but sunshine glinting off a setting that is
less
and less
and less
familiar,
yet more,
and more,
and more my own.
Even you, my friend, my sister, are different.
Even you, my friend, my sister,
slip away in the moonlight
and are not the same in the sunlight.
Yet you remain
even so
My friend. My sister.
Walk with me, sister, into the town. Over the paradise of flower carpeted hills
and break not a petal
not a leaf maim.
It’s incredible.
We are amidst beauty and are unscathed and unscathing,
safe and making safety.
No destruction in our footprints.
No fear in our hearts.
Walk with me through Ladyland, my friend, my sister,
and teach me what
makes sense;
teach me the customs
of peace.
And I will wake up
awakened
and thanking you
my sister.
After reading “Sultana’s Dream,” by Rokeya Hossain, I wrote this poem focusing on the main character’s experience at the beginning of the narrative. I picked up the themes of questioning women’s cloistering, and expressed them somewhat indirectly, using the refrain “my friend, my sister” as a hopefully powerful way to talk about the bonds of womanhood. I also linked the detail about the flowers underfoot which were not hurt by the path of these women as a metaphor for the idea that women tend to be less violent to those around them – which Hossain points out as a reason that men should be kept indoors and women allowed to roam freely. If, as Hossain suggests, men are like tigers, then the solution is not to let the tigers roam free and lock up the ones they might hurt (the women), but to in fact do the opposite. I also had the speaker of the poem ask her friend to teach her what “makes sense” in reference to the lines in “Sultana’s Dream” which use the analogy of an asylum to show the ridiculousness of hiding women away when men are often the ones doing damage. I also wove images of paradise into the poem (detailing the vegetation, which Hossain herself highlights in the narrative), hoping that the idyllic scenes could be connected to ideas about how society should be, but also to how paradise promises to be.
The form of the poem is meant to be evocative, and the indentations and various alignments are intended to go along with the content of change, drawing attention to form and content as symbiotic.