"I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you a nobody, too?"
(Emily Dickinson)
NOBODY
It is not easy to tell the tale of nobody.
A nobody's tale is without a
beginning or an end,
Like jumbled up letters on a mussy page,
Obscure sketches from a hand untrained.
A nobody's anonymous world
Battered by the day, and
Bruised by the night,
Spins and shatters in a gyrating vortex
Of liquid darkness and light.
A nobody lives and dies and again lives
And breathes a dream in between,
Desperate to see just one come true, and
For a glimpse of green in a bald ruin.
The crimson dawn in a nobody's sky
Burns hopes to ash.
A moon flings shards of silver
At nobody’s world, aiming a cruel slash.
The fog settles forever thick and grey
Outside a nobody's window.
In a nobody's land, seasons don't change.
There settles permanent a season of snow.
Songs painted black by storm clouds
Croak beyond a nobody's door.
The wind mourns in the hollow orchards
Roses bleed on a cracked floor;
It is hard to tell a nobody's tale
That has neither a beginning, nor an end.
It's the story of a doomed soul,
That neither has a foe, nor a friend!!
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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