The Clapper

This poem envisages Clapping as a lady and talks to her in abstraction

The Clapper

                   Then set out after repeated warning the grizzly

Afghan Duryodhan

in blazing  sun

removed sandal-wood blooded stone-attired guards

spearing gloom brought out a substitute of dawn

crude hell’s profuse experience

Huh

a night-waken drug addict beside head of feeble earth

from the cruciform The Clapper could not descend due to lockdown

wet-eyed babies were smiling

.

in a bouquet of darkness in forced dreams

The Clapper wept when learnt about red-linen boat’s drowned passengers

in famished yellow winter

white lilies bloomed in hot coal tar

when in chiseled breeze

nickel glazed seed-kernel

moss layered skull which had moon on its shoulder scolded whole night

non-weeping male praying mantis in grass

bronze muscled he-men of Barbadoz

pressed their fevered forehead on her furry navel

.

in comb-flowing rain

floated  on frowning  waves

diesel sheet shadow whipped oceans

all wings had been removed from the sky

funeral procession of newspaperman’s freshly printed dawn

lifelong jailed convict’s eye in the keyhole

outside

in autumnal rice pounding  pink ankle

Lalung ladies

echo forgets to shriek back sensing the beauty of sweat’s fragrance

.

thereafter

Operation Bullshit

ulcer in mouth

numb-penis young rebel’s howl on the martyr platform

non-veg heart daubed in onion paste

black eyed flowers

drenched lotus flower suffered from pneumonia

cloud’s forced roar on a hookah smoking octogenarian train

and lightning covered with gold laced spider web

frog-maid dropped a fat toad  from her back

.

creamy hell-fairy of Babylon

fed medicine tablets to north facing clouds

swirling green fireflies on castor-oil lamp

splints of songs from the crown of ruffled hair comet-face princess

swan with blood-stained feet

prayed for a spring season for the repatriated  armies

who arranged green-bed farmland for the shot-dead rebel’s parents

sulphur mist spread through secret savanna of lion-skin poachers

marriageable horseman The Clapper

Heigh ho

.

suffering from  angst of a little unrecognition

the garden which lifted the betel-nut palms on little finger

in long distance cyclone

below the lamppost

covered by clothes of rain

that broken gait is his form

the profile which searched for relaxing waves

the universe in tandava trance

mouth blocked with leucoplast tape inside a temple

The Clapper

.

when fire separates from smoke

within that flash

the epiglotis

feels bitter between two heart beats

feverish rebels invade through sluice-gate

palash flowers united themselves in blooming red during the cyclone

just like futureless in zoos

in the last breeze

tin-bordered clouds exploded firecrackers

as if  The Clapper will appear just now

.

in the morning the sweeper gathered all clappers assembled during night

in painless love

shoved sick Ganges river in a bag

one or three colour flapping rainbow

food plates were found in graves

 bone columns fell due to wails of exploiteds

nobody is happy

when asked how are you replied

fine

handed over rings of barbed wire from their waist

.

after the oath ceremony of depraved

corpse collectors started visiting towns and villages

people prayed for their right to cry

somewhere else The Clapper

in fractured health

was trying to correct the songs of birds

in star flickering darkness

pillow hugging rainy nights

fish smelling asthma of slippery catfishes in Palamou Jehanabad Rohtas districts

on the eyelids of snail-chin old woman gray dusts of  salt-petre-sulpher

.

for listening to songs of small wide-eyed fishes of half rotten Hooghly river

winter’s fine moult came out of cobra-girl’s attire

suddenly a porcupine

kapok flowers in red wedding dress

young sunflower stared on the side

healthy crab danced in hot oil raising her two scarlet hands

white muslin soft fairies leaped in rice-bowl

after he wept  in darkness The Clapper smiled in light

listened to the jingle of shackles with which he was tied to hospital bed

nightlong tick tock of incarceration of the table clock

.

( Translation of Bengali poem ‘Hattali’ )

Blood Lyric