Categories
Poetry

Virus, Unanswered Questions and more…

By Manu Dash

Virus The ocean is now equipped to endorse swimming. It’s time to endure the ineluctable annual trip. The sky mirrors the swashbuckling journey; Someone waiting for you at the end of the shore. Lights will be clouded when you move avoiding the lighthouse; Use your instinct always before the lullaby disowns its source. Darkness and sea-storms area package, inclusive of Olive Ridley. Ignorance will one day fall like baby teeth. Leading the life of a peacenik is a terrible act. Have you taken the cutlass with you? Not necessary that you should use all the things you have; Throw in everything during the missionary position. Avoid sand dunes which are nothing but Homeric nods. An Unanswered Question The little boy asked his mother, ‘Who made our village river?’ Mother raised her face from The homework and answered, ‘God’. ‘Has he made our village too?’ ‘Yes’ said she. ‘Why the inequality in making Buildings, roads, and facilities?’ ‘Ask these questions with God When you grow older,’ Mother laughed. The following year, the boy met God When his school bus plunged into the river. But no one knew if he raised the question Before God. Obituary for an Artist Did he outwalk The barrage of dreams? The shadow of helplessness grows taller Day after day; Death snatched the singsong soul With half the morning stroll Unfinished under The pregnant sky. A rain of tears damp The virtual wall; The rosary of marigolds Appears like spent bullets; And the gun salute by the state Sinks in the arms of darkness. What’s there in the body Without the soul; What’s there in the soul Without the body? You are thirdfourthfifthsixth May be in this week alone. Unfinished lines and incomplete brush strokes Play with the washerman’s canine; Experience the anguish of eternal waiting. No one will bother to blame fragile memory And wait for the echoing rhetoric. Advice to an Osteoporosis Man Who Loves to Run After dismantling the long night Let’s stop running now. It smells like a joss stick. Fog captures the road ahead. I’ll never know Whose tender hands made these shoes That chime and kiss our asphalt road of life. May I donate to you my ancient history Burdened with false pride and a whine That may bring numinosity to the soul? Let’s turn back now. The days go ahead in their spendthrift way Before you pray a silent prayer Where no prayer-flag is in sight. You may drink the newspapers Brimming with the retching of time.

(with permission taken from A Brief History of Silence, Dhauli Books 2019)

Manu Dash (1956) is a poet, editor, translator, publisher and curator of the annual Odisha Art & Literature Festival. He has published 25 books in Odia and English. While in college, he joined the “Anam Writers’ Movement” — an anti-establishment movement in Odia literature — shortly before the imposition of Emergency in India in 1975. He is the founder of Dhauli Books, which won the prestigious “Publishing Next Industry Award for the Best Printed Book of the Year in Indian Languages” in 2018.

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