What is the point

In condemning one’s city in a loud voice?

Once the dead body of the man

Who committed suicide

Is taken away in a procession.

People gather to whisper,

Bells keep ringing,

Religious discourse is delivered and ribbons are cut.

On my way home alone

I see a lonely owl

At one end of the city.

 

No one asks questions these days,

No one is shaken by accidents.

Load-shedding in the city, long queues for ration,

Praying for a boon in the temple of Chandi,

Donations for medha or ganja,

One has to buy gold bangles

For one’s wife—

Life goes on like this.

 

One gets money from a job,

From bribes, from economic planning, from dowry.

Offerings are made to fourteen generations,

Heads shrink into their covers,

One’s back turns into a stone

Like that of a tortoise.

In quiet moments

Whirlwinds play on the banks of Kathjodi—

Life goes on like this.

 

What is the point in

Condemning the city in a loud voice?

When vultures settle down on the neem tree

Before the hospital,

Evening descends on the city.

Lotus petals slowly close,

Honey dries in beehives,

Amorous honeybees choke

On their passion,

Growing youth withers,

The moon stretches its neck like a camel.

 

I stumble on my way.

The two-faced city stands before me,

One face turned to the stomach, the pen, the storage trunk,

The other to the temple, the graveyard, suffering and desire.

Between the two

A tall wall and the depths of time.

What is the point in condemning one’s city

In a loud voice.

Mornings are all different.

Autumnal, tranquil, cloudy,

Tigerish, brave.

No two mornings are the same.

Some grow to become adults,

Some perish midway

Like ill-fated children.

Another morning:

The school bus falls into the Yamuna

Little bodies, tiffin boxes, atlases, notebooks, a diary,

Float on the water.

 

Some mornings smell of aparajita and gangasiuli,

Some of marigold.

Black dragon flies swarm around them.

Hidden in their wings,

The fragrance of the night and the colour of the day.

Hidden in their wings,

My ancestors, myself, and several past mornings.

I know when we meet

You will ask me:

‘Where were you

All these days?’

I have travelled like a nomad,

A thousand years,

Crossing over civilizations,

Heaps of dust, stones and skeletons.

 

Between the fingers of my feet,

The sands of river Daya,

The stains of cruelty,

The repentance of Ashoka,

Marks of stone on my back,

The whip of capital.

 

After a thousand years

I have come looking for your face

In soft leaves and blue sky:

You – Banalata Sen of Natore.

I have lost my way

Following the course of a river.

Does the river travel a fixed route?

Now I am seeking

The return journey of a bird,

Hoping to find my way

So we meet, face to face.

You, Banalata Sen of Natore.

What Shravan is this

That does not drench my body,

Doesn’t fill and soften with longings

Nor cool the heat of the summer

Enveloping the earth,

Nor wipe out stains of grief

The alphabet of nightmares

From my sweat-soaked face.

 

What Shravan is this

That does not shower my heart’s valley

With drops of rain,

Nor makes its creepers and poems

Sprout tendrils,

Or blue lilies blossom,

To help the poet face

The God-less city.

 

What Shravan is this,

When no Jahnavi gushes out

And washes away

The dead ash from my heart.

When no history is conjured up,

No forgotten ancestors resurface.

The ruins of time do not loom,

Cooling the fetid breath

Of the cavern of civilization

And the dying faith

Oozing from wounded breasts.

 

What Shravan is this,

That does not open its heart

To running waters,

Roll out a green carpet for life,

Make its poetry flash in lightning,

Make the thunder

Echo the poet’s voice.

No one calls today

In the dense forest,

No woodpecker pecks at a tree.

Time that had flown into the forest

Like a baramasi bird

Twitters no more.

 

The bird-catcher knows

The secrets of the forest,

But the forest knows

How to pluck stars from the sky.

How to protect a fragile world

In the hollow of a tree.

 

The bird-catcher builds his forest

Out of arrows, cages and glue,

Fills his heart with

Creepers, roots, leaves, and feathers.

High on

The fragrance of honey

His heart sways

Like a jungle bear.

When the birds escape him,

Failure shrinks his heart,

Like the forest

Turning fossil.

 

Bird-catcher:

Go and catch birds.

May the basket of this sky

Shower down on you

Clouds and flowers.

May the wings of a tired world

Catch in your glued stick.

Wherever you are,

Come and see

How doves fly,

Slicing the horizon,

To that world

Once destroyed

By a sudden storm.

 

You do not believe

That stones can float

On river Chandrabhaga,

The gate to the temple

Can be built again,

The deity placed

In the sanctum sanctorum,

And our fate once again

Linked with our past.

 

Why should I say

What is not possible?

You may think

Distrust is my second nature.

Why should I tear open my heart

To show the void lying buried within?

You may think

Even in such a state

I still seem arrogant.

 

Wherever you are,

Come and see

How silent ecstasy

Envelops my body of stone,

How the sea stretches out its foamy neck.

I murmur that old half-forgotten song,

My eyes on the horizon.

Have you ever seen

The natural death of a bird?

As a ripe fruit falls,

Or dry coconut fronds.

Heard the last shudder of its wings?

Or is it the sound of the soul

Slipping out of the body’s net,

The weary dream

Slipping through the fingers?

The last breath rises,

Like a bubble

From the unknowable

Depths.

 

Have you ever seen

The natural death of a bird?

 

No, I never have.

I have seen the bird’s corpse

Hanging from overhead cables,

One wing drooping,

The other pointing at the clouds,

And the gaping beak

Like a crack in a stone.

 

I have seen, in the city’s drains,

Feathers, a bird’s head,

The remains of winged life,

Crumpled sheets of paper

Scrawled with the text

Of our arrogant lives.

Black marks glitter

Like the black arrows of a hunter,

The twisted footfalls of humanity.

 

Have you ever seen

The natural death of a bird?

 

It is time to leave home

The earthen pot on the threshold

Filled with water

And mango leaves.

Dried tulsi in the shirt pocket.

Curious faces at the front verandah.

Mother’s eyes wet

Like leaves in the rain.

 

The same advice:

Bow to the Goddess,

At the turn of the lane,

Do not look back,

Do not leave on the thirteenth day,

You will go down with fever.

 

In the midst of all this,

The blue light flashes,

A sad moment arrives.

I cannot imagine the spread

Of the barren land

Which stretches far, far.

I know little of the moon

That crawls on the rails

In the night,

 

I cannot retrieve my gaze from the sky

And focus my eyes on the ground, on the roots.

I have travelled far

Like an aimless cloud,

Like a seed, a feather pressed by the leaves of a book.

 

Inside the wooden box,

Old palm-leaf manuscripts, a horoscope and toys.

 

Why am I so perturbed?

Why this dead volcano within me,

Waking up?

 

I make no wish today,

Seek no alms,

Nothing to suck from the roots,

Nothing to grow like a creeper,

A tendril or love.

 

I have travelled long.

The winter night rolls over like a drum

On a narrow path.

The neon light wears the colour of dried leaves.

A winter bird trembles inside me.

 

The bird does not know

When the lamp of winter will die.

Whether it will travel east or west,

Alone or in a crowd.

Inside me

Lives a trembling bird,

A reflection at arm’s length

From me.

I 

Someone calls me

From inside a dark sanctum,

A broken temple,

An ancient valley,

Soured relationships,

A bustling marketplace,

My grandmother’s toothless mouth . . .

Someone calls me very softly.

 

Though feeble,

The voice stings me.

The wet sharp edge of the words

Wounds my chest,

My muscles,

My whole body.

 

My friend,

Do not utter a word of pity.

Make me remember half-forgotten songs,

Their rhythmic jingle,

For I have so many things to say today.

 

Often have I wished to write

Of aching agony,

Of things lying still fresh

In the depths of my heart.

Instead

I end up writing

Letters,

The address of the woman I love,

Or the number of dead in a riot

Or of friends falling in love,

Long existentialist poems

Of prologues and epilogues—

Yours, Bishnu Mohapatra.

 

II

 

Today

I have a lot to say,

Canvases to coat with colour,

Soaring walls to scale,

Riddles to solve

With the help of Leelawati Sutra.

As I ponder over these,

I wake up.

A painted world unfolds outside,

Timid stars blink

Like tiny earthen lamps.

That is not the sky,

My friend,

But a temple without doors.

The walls lie under a layer

Of impenetrable grime.

Legends crowd my mind,

A casket of stories.

 

Listen,

The sound of something

Tinkling,

A glittering sword,

The earth

Red from the blood

Of the sacrificial victim.

Doubts pervade the air

Like a cholera epidemic

Or a famine.

 

III

 

Don’t say anything now.

What’s the point?

What’s gone is gone

For good.

What has been washed away

Has vanished.

The sweet smell of flowers,

The stink of a corpse

On a pyre,

Or the orgasmic

Arrival

Of the first rain.

 

Let me tear my poems

Into shreds.

Let me live in your

World of words and love.

Give me my weapons,

Secret mantras,

A reel of relationships.

When I tug at the string

Let the kite soar higher

And higher,

Slither into winding lanes

Like a snake,

Fly above cities

And open fields

Watching closely,

Linking the earth and the sky,

Innocence and desire.

I put clay and human flesh

On the potter’s wheel,

Circling like the sun,

Sculpt faces,

Waists like streams,

A worn out body

Sprawled on a bed,

A loosened top-knot,

A fleshy worm

At a white nipple.

 

IV

 

Memories

Crowd in upon me.

Today

Mania, the mendicant

Passed away,

Singing

As he had done all his life,

‘Do you chant the name of Ram, my son?’

His son sings,

Playing on a kendera,

His mother’s tattooed hands

Scrub the narrow verandah clean,

Even today

She has stored rice and mandia

In a bowl

Against a rainy day.

His grandfather

Sits listlessly,

Waiting to drop

Suddenly

Like a ripe coconut

In his backyard.

 

Sometimes

I remember

Mad Madhua’s pitch black eyes,

And Madhua baring his teeth

To smile.

How he drags himself in the dust,

Burns a tyre,

Licks leftovers

From a leafplate

In the middle of the road.

How he asks,

Fixing his eyes on the images of Jagannath

Plastered on cars and scooters,

‘What are you, bastards?

Men or pyjamas?’

 

Today

A great deal seems

Unfinished,

Abandoned.

A god without hands or feet,

Eunuchs as slaves,

Empty smiles,

Half-formed paeans.

No-one returns,

Ever.

Not words,

Nor father.

 

Only the echo comes back,

For it does not die

Like our relatives,

Running water does not wash it away,

It never gathers dust or moss,

A kiss, like a flower,

Slides off its skin,

It never goes out

Like an oil lamp or

A rainbow.

The wine of words

Intoxicates me,

Pulls me into its orbit,

As if going round and round

Is a truth

I can never escape.

 

V

 

I have many things to say today.

I must open doors, my heart, the lock,

And unravel the tangled skein of life.

 

I must search through the lanes and by-lanes,

And untie the boat,

Open the eyes of youth,

Level the ridges,

And harrow the fields of sand.

Slip out of the tightening noose,

And break out of the chakravyuha

Closing in upon me,

Defeat the plot laid by silence

And decorum’s cold dictums.

 

Shall say something today

That will gush out like blood,

Undulate like waves.

Sunflowers will glow,

Alone and in a multitude,

Like the face of darkness.

The hooting of the owl

Will send out a sign,

Leap out like living fish.

 

Weariness will descend upon life,

On the writing hand.

Shadows will dim the eyes of memory.

 

I have many things to say today.

The last sunshine of

Nineteen hundred ninety six.

The kiss of the last sunshine, the last kiss.

The ice melts on the road,

On Big Ben, on London Bridge.

The last heap of ice of nineteen hundred ninety six.

In the deepest chamber of one’s heart

The fragrance of someone’s body, spreading

The last fragrance of nineteen hundred ninety six.

 

Tomorrow morning

Will commence a new game of time.

Colour will dazzle on a butterfly’s wings,

Kisses will dance on ladies’ cheeks,

Memory will grow new wings.

All this will happen tomorrow.

 

What do we have to do with time?

It flows over us, our stony backs,

Floats eternally in front of our eyes.

You may say:

Time flows, floats,

It is indivisible and cannot be arrested.

 

It is all right,

Your philosophy of time,

But for ordinary mortals

Time comes in days, weeks, months,Years, decades,

In secret glances,

In waiting embraces,

In love-making moments,

In moments of forgetfulness. 

 

Tomorrow,

The last song of nineteen hundred ninety six

Will have a new tune.

It will pass on the baton

To another hand,

The last hand of nineteen hundred ninety six.