Last night rain knocked so incessantly on the prison roof

That its sound, becoming an echo. cut through the stagnant darkness

Spreading and contracting everywhere.

I swear by these ramparts raising their heads, I thought

That, in the prison corner,

All the roads of life are closed;

But today, life sings, even in this lock-closed land.

Beauty calls the artist even in this stone-steel fort.

.

  December 1958

From: Dasht-i vafā (Desert of Fidelity), 1964. p. 158

With Munibur Rahman