By Dom Moraes I -wake and find myself in love:And this one time I do not doubt.I only fear, and wander outTo hold long parley with a dove. The innocent and the guilty, metHere in the garden, feel no fear.But I’m afraid of you, my dear.There was a reason: I Read more…
By Dom Moraes Ground in the Victorian lock, stiff,With difficulty screwed open,To admit me to the seven mossed stairsAnd the badly kept garden. Who runs to me in memoryThrough flowers destroyed by no love But the child with brown hair and eyes,Smudged all over with toffee? I lick his cheeks. Read more…
By Dom Moraes The architecture of an auntMade the child dream of cupolas,Domes, other smoothly rounded shapes.Geometries troubled his sleep. The architecture of young womenMildly obsessed the young man:Its globosity, firmness, texture,Lace cobwebs for adornment and support. Miles from his aunt, the old childWatched domes and cupolas defacedIn a hundred Read more…
By Dom Moraes Smear out the last star.No lights from the islandsOr hills. In the great squareThe prolonged vowel of silenceMakes itself plainly heardRound the ghost of a headlandClouds, leaves, shreds of birdEddy, hindering the wind. No vigils left to keep.No enemies left to slaughter.The rough roofs of the slopes,Loosely Read more…
By Jayanta Mahapatra Dust seems in no hurry now, sailingthe air. A ten-year-old girlruns after her home-bound cowsthrough the ingenious sunset hour,glancing briefly as we pass bybut gives no sign that she has seen us. The day’s last lightsurprises us, leaving everyonesuddenly on an endless, desolate shore.And a small desire Read more…
By Jayanta Mahapatra Awaken them; they are knobs of soundthat seem to melt and crumple uplike some jellyfish of tropical seas,torn from sleep with a hand lined by prophecies.Listen hard; their male, gaunt world sprawls the pagelike rows of tree trunks reeking in the smokeof ages, the branches glazed and Read more…
By Jayanta Mahapatra The yellowed diary’s notes whisper in vernacular.They sound the forgotten posture,the cramped cry that forces me to hear that voice.Now I stumble back in your black-paged wake. No uneasy stir of clouddarkened the white skies of your day; the silenceof dust grazed in the long afterniin sun, Read more…
Jayanta Mahapatra Endless crow noisesA skull in the holy sandstilts its empty country towards hunger. White-clad widowed Womenpast the centers of their livesare waiting to enter the Great Temple Their austere eyesstare like those caught in a nethanging by the dawn’s shining strands of faith. The fail early light catchesruined, Read more…
by Jayanta Mahapatra In the darkened rooma womancannot find her reflection in the mirror waiting as usualat the edge of sleep In her hands she holdsthe oil lampwhose drunken yellow flamesknow where her lonely body hides © Jayanta MahapatraFrom: Collected PoemsPublisher: Paperwall Media & Publishing Pvt.Ltd. (2018)
By Jayanta Mahapatra A grey haze over the ricefields.The black cow grazing with her new-born calf,long-legged, unsteady—or trucks going past the high road:such things only claimthat I am looking out in search of memory,not death. Those little kisses on our cheeksmy long-dead grandmother gave me, orthe soft dampness of my Read more…