NIGHT OF THE ECLIPSE
That night a shadow spread over the
Moon's face.
The moon, heavy in its
Pain of loss became red
And shed scarlet tears
On the nocturnal earth caught in a
Warm vaporous net.
The shadow lengthened down to
A morning full of rain and river
And the waves screaming a vow
To drag the fields into
Coffins of sand even while
They still breathed in green.
The morning after,
No sun peeped through the clouds of east.
No music dropped from the wind
Or the drowsy trees.
The green lay inert in its grave
And rotted.
Dreams rotted too, eaten away
By worms swarming in grey abandon.
The shadow swallowed everything
Like a desert, like an ocean,
Like the endlessly expanding time.
Everything, like the moon
went inside the dark, crippling net.
The sparkle in a thousand pairs of eyes
sank in the shadow of the river
In a permanent eclipse.
Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.
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