JAYANTA MAHAPATRA

Abandoned TempleA brambly thicket of blackberry canessquats, a votary, before it.Another autumn slowly ticks away.Veils of mist smile on nervouslyat this victim of unmoving grass..A wandering boy hurls a rock throughthe ruined entrance. Shadows in retreat fly;of serpent-girls, elephant-gods, fiery birds.Mosquitoes slap the Siva linga in ignorant stillness,a long shiver running down the shrine..A ghost holding its gaze to a distant tenderness.In an expanded pupil of stonea whitened hibiscus twists its wayalong the phosphorescent wake of a moonbeamtoward a winter-life of ritual and innocence..AfternoonThe harsh afternoon skin of the summer skylies in flakes on the dry river bed.There, the raped and dismembered bodyof another thirteen-year-old girl, stilledbeyond the tremblings of the sands..Only shadows in the God's handsendorse the despairhaunting the report in the day's newspaper..Meanwhile, under the blank sands,a frail flow of hope goes past, as always,carrying our women's uncertain future.And elsewhere, the musclemenof a country's leaderskeep askingunder their breath: What happened?.Late afternoon I saw a young widowstrip herself naked by the water.Just dark bruises all over her fair bodymade by a world's lust-filled eyeskept turning helplessly toward the river:the tide on a dark beach somewherewashing a worn-out wood bench on the sands..Darkness.The darkness kept on its gentle murmurPeeping out from piles of refuseFrom tips of brooms that sweep every floorFrom the posture of litter after the party's overFrom the exhausted yawn of someone called GodDarkness recited the tables of the earth's turnin.From a window here and a door thereDarkness lifted its head and lookedWho would show it the way?It slipped past reason and knocked on the Minister's heartIt flaunted its shape, gathering momentsfrom the light of hostile historyThen came and stood out therein a middle-class neighbourhood, stark naked.Does the dark hide a distant tenderness?An air of healing?For years it has mumbled the song of the senses,growing older with each night;but now keeps alive the desert moon of the soulin the endless self-betrayal of the waking sense of thingsthough the clock's ticking on the bookcase.Darkness, evening song.Root of startled light.Good may come out of it.But the mind is too small a roomand I don't know where the dream can go.Just a bank of coloured lottery ticketscrosses the darkness of an ill-fated man.