DID YOU
SEE IT FALL
Did you
see it fall
Clinging,
snakelike alone, for a while
Before
it fell, crystalline and brief.
The
stark end of a forgotten mossy branch
Bending
with sorrow for the sublime.
The
weight
Of an
age of motion as swift as rain, broke
Through
the green-blue-black,
a last
cry
Before
the change.
A
water-drop.
Did you
think it would be this way
That
you would weep for the smell of a time
Lost
and washed away,
An old
age, an age of knowing, of growing
Sunk
without to where no rain can fall.
That
you would see the bending trees
Grow
larger through the convex wave
On
black seas—your life a water-drop,
you
alone
Powerless
to stop its fall.
TO A GIRL,
IN PRIVATE.
The
wind blowing a breath across the field
A
falling wing howling in the night
The
memory of a name unawakened
Make
hungry breaches
Open in
the moon.
The
moon has alighted on the steeple
Reaching
a gnarled arm in caress
By your
torn leap into deranged space
Closeness
has been found.
Won’t
you come and see?
Your
eyes are opening like black roses
Your
mouth never ceased to move
In
darkness. Yet this trembling
Fist,
you kiss with lips that melt
Nightlong.
The
season is ending, the doors are falling shut
Awaiting
the first breath, hesitant
Which
all will realise
And
sanctify
In
fading memory of your martyrdom
Then
let us not be shy of holding hands
One
last time, obscure friend
Be to
me
Small
and fragile once more
Before
they take you away.
They
are taking you to the public square
A
million tiny soldiers, they hold you
Aloft.
A pyre is burning
Vermillion
and the taste of ash
Etching
into raw flesh
Its own
irony!
We will
wear your heart on our foreheads, love—
Twisting
our round necks with pride
Dolled-up
in our own backyard,
We will
be right.
But you
will only lie still.
Over
that beaded head now hideously
Steams
a white froth reeking of icy
Massacre,
sail across white corridors of stone
Sterile
and smokelike
With
stone in your mouth
Blue,
blue, blue and cold, your heart!
Still
breathless, stilling, still.
Rounded
love
That
had brimmed in your eye
Ready
to overflow—
That
echo runs wailing over the sea
Nirbhaya,
Pi Patel has found the light
But
when Death came
Baring
his thighs
Did you
fear?
Lift up
your eyes of smattered Kohl!
Pull
out your arms from the wall
And
come to me
Sweet
princess
Only
child.
Devikaa!
Daminii! Jahnvii!
You are
on the last boat ride!
Orange-juice-lemon-juice
man
Bhelpuri
–bhaiya-oozing-hard-work
Wave a
blue rag from the shore
Devika,
run your hand through your hair
Jahnvi,
put your hands in the air—and then
Devika,
Jahnvi, stop. And cry.
Weep it
out. Then shout.
Damini,
lie still.
Under a
brazen shadow engulfing
The
rocks, the arched spine rising
From
the shriek
The
black colossus with the razor beak
Ripping,
ripping, ripping.
No
chain will stay him now.
Don’t
sob, you wretch, show enmity!
Be the
red siren with flaming locks
And let
your touch be anger.
When
all the world moves, why
Should
you be silent?
Your
feet quiver. Then what great malice
Froze
the fire in your mouth—
As they
ran wild
Virgin
like
With unintelligible
groans?
Tell me
what dawn they will open for me.
Or is
it a pennant-stricken sky
Will we
sing of revolutions
While
you, love,
Grow
old in modesty?
Stay
awhile, I’m terrified!
New
Year Madonna! Dance already!
Another
candle I light
From
that ashen womb
Another
minute I borrow.
This
sorrowful hand, heavier than a tide
You
softly fill with the lightness of birds
We are
carried up high
In the rising smell
In the rising smell
Of cola
and crackers.
Forgive
me if I yield to them now—
Forgive
me if I die
Like
your quenched terror bending over me
Raw and
palpable, yet
Past
like a winter.
In the
end, to know your ordinariness
Had
never a thing to do with us
The
sigh is cold now
And
fragmented.
Motion
can only haunt you now.
So sit
at long last like an angel at the clock
Ticking
like a woman’s truth, in black dusk.
I’ll
weep for your lost laugh
Private
and country less
A laugh
I’ll never know.
Oh, the
chunri that flies aloft like Spring!
Curling
on the clouds like a widows grief
Oh the
scarlet raptures
Of a
kiss
Unreceived.
Oh the
hope that shakes at last
Those
roguish hands brewing a new obsidian
Oh the
rain that falls
Drowning
your face
Unseen.
[On16
December 2012, a twenty-three year old girl
was brutally raped on a bus in Delhi when returning from a screening of ‘Life
of Pi’. ‘Nirbhaya’, the one who awoke a nation, died of her injuries on the 29th
of December.]
WOMAN
Her tongue had a reputation for being quick
To curl
around a thoughtful pen or a nicked finger
And her
fingers, they said
Fit
perfectly on the creases of old foreheads.
She
walked stirring up the dust
(which
being so disturbed, nonetheless
whispered
devotedly around her ankles),
Smelling
of indulgent antiseptic, smiling her smile
Making
them want to live for that reason only.
The
banister said to the main-gate one night
‘I
can’t imagine, what or who, the other night,
Had
broken from her charm!
It
must’ve been a poltergeist.’
She’d
run as though she’d seen a ghost
Ripped-lips-bruised-knees
Torn-bloused
through the howling corridor.
[Suchetana
Mukhopadhyay]
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