Kalahandi (poem) - The Poem

The Poem

In the shifting shadows of lantern light

Her hollow contours become yet more pronounced

Against the pitch darkness of the impatient man

As he advances she struggles with the suffocating stench

Of empty sacks stained with kerosene smoke

Smell of hooch, of sweat, of flesh, the Man's

Drunken half-smile, look of vague desire, the dark

Hollow of her dry hung elongated breasts, the dark

Gaping cleavages of paddy fields throw a mocking sneer.

Erratic fingers, nails digging into the skin -

Haggard looking crows swooping down in haphazard trajectories.

Twisting of bodies, arms clasping, unclasping

Emaciated naked children fight over a loaf

Of dark bread snatched from a tired dog :

silhouettes of puppets in a drollery

A woman wails by the body

Of husband crushed under a sack of relief rice

his breath, her breath, hot, mingling together :

Dry leaves rustle in the mid-afternoon air.

She cambers up, indifferent, like a crab, in spasms

As the hairy-chested man lunges for a decisive thrust :

Look of tiredness in the eyes,

ready to bite, but unable to move the underjaws.

Her body, breathing, lies exhausted -

A gleam of compromised content in her eyes

Having added two rupees to the forty she earned last

week by selling off her daughter.