Subhayu Mishra

RECEIVING YOU

Jagged hills bite into a vulnerable sky. The colour will drain and its face, pale. The plains roll far below nodding like old men. Last light, a witness on an assembly of leaves. A frog croak in the reeds finely serrates the water. A lonely dragonfly moves in closed orbit. Spaces drift away like unkept promises. Then, you come longing, an orphaned breeze. Your wished abandon on an acre of our lives. And my hope of holding you, orphaned, in my arms.

HEAR A VILLAGE NIGHT

The evening of my village sinks into a far dog's howl. The trees near the paddy fields fall dark. Bird sounds, once like light, long and wide, group into miserly nests, holding themselves. A patchwork quilt of weeds drapes the pond. The road can no longer divide the village till the end; the dark has swallowed it. Pandita Ratha knows things he doesn't tell. As the charioteer shows the way to the archer, you can touch the Pandita's voice, falling. Only to rise again, when the charioteer implores. The great archer, tightens, like the string of his magical bow, and the call of his blood sprays out of him like a hail of his own arrows. The village, for a time, is no longer afraid of the demons, the wick lamp makes on the walls. They hear the twang of the magical bow, as they gather here, a brief before their own battles. No one knows which side is he fighting from. The Pandita has to find the end before sleep. And morning will come bereft of a beginning.

AFTER ALL SUCH YEARS

The itch on your back now, dislodges symmetry. Your shoulder blades bracket in single thought trying to encase that itch; safe like parents. No one is sure about the next morning, if those hills are too old to bear a baby sun. Behind you, silences fall apart from separation So, those hurried glances you feel, are for agreeing. Maybe the girl with vine-like limbs will turn at her waist and drop an errant eye that will scurry across the mangroves of your tiger chest. On the other side, the itch, persistent and drawing edges, imitates the errant scurry of the dropped eye. If your shoulder blades don't bracket, like parents, now. If you don't hide your red heart deep in the mangroves from the errant eye, elders will open their folded questions. Then, you will have to walk into beliefs because no escape is better guarded. Except for times when you wake up with a start, and some evenings get mistaken for their corresponding dawns. We could disappear, like a serpent swallowing itself, unaware that in its end lies its beginning. In mangroves where the single eye scurries, silences separate, glances muster strength. At places where we cannot see, brackets close, safe as parents. We will read aloud our faith from the parchment of our ancestral skin; gathered words of separate silences. Like the sea every night skims off the fallen light of stars into white froth. Subhayu Mishra comes from Puri, a small temple town from the eastern seaboard of India, and works in Bombay. He is past thirty, single and working in a corporation.

Poetrybay seeks fine poetry, reviews, commentary and essays without restriction in form or content, and reserves first electronic copyright to all work published. All rights to published work revert to the author following publication. All Email submissions should be in body of email text.