THE DARK WAVES OF A LAST SUNDAY: Five Poems by Bibhu Padhi

The world’s fifth-largest earthquake in a century, with a magnitude of 8.9, struck the coast of the Northern Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday, triggering tsunamis that crashed into Sri Lanka and India, drowning thousands…..Altogether, over 4000 deaths—mostly in Southern India and Sri Lanka, were reported so far. The toll is expected to rise significantly.

The Times of India, Monday, December 27, 2004

The confirmed number of people killed in the earthquake and tidal waves that struck Indian Ocean shorelines passed 67,000 on Wednesday, amid warnings the true toll could be far higher.

 The Times of India, Thursday, December 30, 2004

DEATH IN DECEMBER

Here, everything is intact
just as it was last week.
Trees, houses, men, except
those few who had to go
because they had spent a lot of time
with themselves and others, as if
it was an end worth waiting for.

Just now, elsewhere, the living
are counting the dead, telling us
throughout days and nights
how death’s numbers increase,
unknown to us, how flames
have started enclosing
those numberless loves and wishes
that are so harshly thrown about
the savage, diminished landscape.

Where do blessings stay?
Unseen by us, counting themselves
as if to an immoderate infinity?
How do they rain where
no love is, but only the pride of
having a name that has
turned famous through all our
weaknesses of being human,
our inherited innocence?

How does one live, except by
forgetting what doesn’t belong to us?
Our belief in the soul’s existence
through innumerable births and deaths,
in after-lives, our doubts about
the kind of death that can
shock us, our children
and wives, beyond belief?
And yet, after all this, we can still wait
to see what hasn’t yet been said!

HAUNTED

The deep blue is sleeping under
a gray-white sky, unmoved by voices
that are sucked into distant waters.

Bodies have been shaken by
the darkest earth and thrown back
into an ancient time.

The dead, useless numbers rise
like waves, fall, and then spread across
the mind’s saline shores.

Names hover above
our inconsequential hearts
like December fogs.

Frail, failing hands struggle
to hold to their numb hearts
our needless future.

All that the eyes possessed
have been used, involuntarily,
in purchasing a moment’s magic
that will bring back yesterday.

It’s night and all the magic of time
has long since been sold away
to dark, devious waters, darker lands.

Perhaps, somewhere, in a small island
remembered for its loss, someone
is breathing yet, telling us
how unfaithful life can be.

A PAIR OF SMALL EYES

From the small screen
dry, tired eyes look at me
as if our eyes
had met somewhere,

in another country, another
century.  How shall I
make myself free, now that
I’m so very much afraid

of their humility,
speechless innocence?
I think I know
what those glassy eyes

are looking for:
a word, a glass
of water,
a kiss.

It has been almost
a month since
they have seen
anything except

those still, archaic bodies,
their old, primitive skin
shining under
a dubious sun,

their mouths and lips
disappearing  into the earth,
muted by the sea’s
arrogant speech.

It seems as if
I’ve been hearing
a voiceless sound that comes
far from where I am—

a sound that I’ve heard when,
night after night,  I’ve looked
for sleep and those fine,
purposeless dreams.

Today, those same
exiled eyes seem to
look back at all their
ancient friendships,

for what they
desperately need—what
the ever-compassionate heart
is believed to give,

love’s tremor on my
fingers and lips,
so that they will
never have to see

how distant breath can be,
how even blind love can’t be
where it so eagerly
wishes to be.

THAT DAY, TODAY

What pulled up the blue’s
quiet, ancient home,

its invisible, very own,
private floors?

Was it my hand’s
traditional tremor?

Or a long-hidden truth,
opening from under

the earth’s mineral density?
Our fear of the future?

The land didn’t know
and hence, cannot answer.

It seems the deep sea
suddenly let go its gray secrets,

its being what it always was
and no one knew.

As always, good old history
began to talk while I kept myself away

for fear of losing the little faith
I had still left with me.

I was merely watching
how secretly fiction was emerging

from the shadows
of land and sea, how myths

are born and inherited,
defying geography.

Again, as usual, my own words
were far-fetched, wrong–

dumb, too few
even for now.

THIS IS WHAT I THINK NOW

Pictures and words
have turned cold, utterly so.

I don’t want to turn back
to the old newspapers
to locate where exactly
the heart likes to stay.

Who would like to remember
an old, mostly forgotten, wound
at this fine, breezy hour?

But what’s that child
doing, among the past?

I can’t quite see the details
of this new picture,
maybe in water colors,

although I can hear
the sea-waves from Puri
through several years.

What is it that a child
at this instant
could be looking for?

Is it something that I
might’ve stolen from
a residual home
between land and sea

one full-moon Sunday
in December? The elfin doll
that slept beside her?
Slim stories from the past

her mother used to narrate
night after night,
to bring sleep to her

shifting eyes?
Crumpled pieces of
drawing paper?

I know, they are indeed
some of the things
with which our children
laugh at us, our makeshift world.

I wonder if she isn’t
looking for
that one thing which
she used to have

only a month ago,
something we never had—
something precious, like
a face, a touch, a simple loss!

But it seems, just now,
at the end of the day, all our
precious things, all those
we call our own–

our built-up stories, all our
games and play—
are like those numerous
hours and days which have
gone past us, in their

own small, forgetful ways,
have migrated to a country
far beyond our reach,

all our money and faith–
far, too far away.

*******

 

Bibhu Padhi has published seventeen books of poetry. His most recent magazine acceptances include New Humanist (UK) and Reed Magazine (USA). He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

This author in The Beacon