Dibyendu's WallScript

When night is done I will search the alleys in fear, for light has wounded more of this body than I can count.   A sharp line of it falls on my shoulder at the turning of the crossroad— a flash of unease, comfort, and suspicion. Then comes the hunt for a safe wall, and the hiss of bullets.   In the heart without light, light means the scar of blood, the pulse of insecurity. Light means the anger of native police, light means administration, reservation, caste, industry, capital; light means democracy, protest, the seizure of government.   I search only for the dark, muttering mad phrases in Amlashol, Belpahari, and every other corner where the light does not go, where lives waste away in silence, where dreams fall from their stems and the dry red soil bristles with quiet threat.   There I remain in deepest secrecy. I love the dark, I live in the dark— and all the friends of light are my enemies. ...

Where the pores of the skin tremble in a sudden shiver, I gaze without reason at strange devotions. On those harsh, unyielding days feelings drift in and out of dreams. If lustful imaginings are to become truth, someone insolent to the body will speak of love— the fevered moment when passion falls— will it not expose the fraud? Let that day come when, in self-pleasure, one clings to the urgency of a solitary life.   In our darkness, our servitude, a lone figure rises from the shadows— at the crossroads of Freudian awareness— forgetting the fears of kin, walking beast-like and alone, seeking an undefined fate. In this mind, strange dreams come and go; a voiceless decay, dreams like the wind of a wing tending to the skin, filling the pores with an astonishing thrill. In air where feeling does not exist, the stunned intoxication of machinery— our destiny is the mechanism we carry along, in the relentless urge of a solitary life. ...

What lay in the minds of ghosts is there still, and will remain— the restless sea’s identity, or the world in grey, while dogs keep talking.   On earth there is no true self; in the darkness of personality there is sin, and stain in the name of justice. From morning, everything sits powdered and posed.   Wisdom’s disgust has no cremation, as if this were not a stage at all, but only leadership— and like the climber’s upward reach, it frees the imagination while I remain formless, forever.   I weave dreams in the uncertain clamour— a linguist, hearing voices drift from behind the stage: I was here, seeking the dissected life. False speech brought many promises, yet today, truth is such that not one line made it to the manuscript’s page in the end.   The mask will stay on the face— that is certain; from the shadows words turn bestial. Identity hides flawless, while sins and deeds spread their wings into the mind’s strange realm.   In darkness, ghosts are unseen, j...

The Color of Life   What is the color of life? In the sincerity of the world, all colors are bound in seven loops.   In quiet, faded light, moment by moment, we hurry back again— but toward what light?   A morning full of color— one colored light. In the monastery’s field of kash flowers, a solitary nun; a thicket of white in the sky; the color of calm, of still and quiet time?   Or the proud, upraised, majestic hue of the endless horizon, where clouds, in perfect arrangement, paint the sky; the black of forests, obscene and terrifying— is that its color?   Or perhaps in color there is so much blood, so much crimson, youth and age together— and at this edge of life, it frightens me.   Then it all lies scattered in the rush of a thousand people; in getting lost, I feel it must be there, mixed into the polish of skin— some color, surely.   I have not seen it. Seeking to see the world, I have learned myself. ...

For the sake of conscience we bear a selfless weight; the limit of ruthless exhaustion was passed long ago.   The inescapable gospel of decay— a single life is almost small enough to slip beneath the lens, magnified into Lenin, into the rivers of blood that run from nation to nation, from the Himalayan snows to the Gobi sands.   Across them drift the weary words of the Tathagata; human civilization thins in the shame of honesty, still seeking sin within the temple of virtue.   Sin remains— in the bodhi-light of unclouded meditation, in the spontaneous motions of our mind, in the unknown chambers of the mental vault.   We flee to save ourselves from the shelter of lies; in our sincerity itself sin is born.   The non-dual soul wanders guiltless, yet life decays, fear gathers— and when we have crossed all the weary doctrines and roads of earth, the boundary-line still stands, telling us where the dark grows strong by pulling in the whole harvest of light.   Ti...

Piercing the heart, deep into the unbroken core of thought, tomorrow scatters wide. If only time were stretched a little more, the wounds might find their shelter.   Enduring sorrow makes pain clear; words fade, yet are never destroyed. There, let joy be given— only an endless surge of fervor.   Strengthened, the walls rise, hidden behind armor of detachment. Let the pain fall, becoming tears; stay in delight—this is good.

There was so much to say when my days were green— I looked into the eyes of fear and waited for the good season. The whole day passed cutting words into pieces, locking my mouth; they were never spoken.   A furtive glance, eyelids lowering, the mind’s green turning grey— my story of loving you was never told.   Now the years have grown heavy, youth nearly at its edge; I waited so long to love you, yet today the old surge of feeling did not arrive.   So much was there to say, so long the waiting— easy to be a fool while knowing better. On this soil, it is simpler to fight for love than to speak of it.   So many people, so many illnesses; the hunger of the heart, the weight of tenderness— across the rice fields of labour, I lost the road.   Under the noon’s full blaze with the burden of grief, I walked the narrow ridges between crops, words flowing upstream, brushing the courtyard’s edge.   Dream, yearning, and careful imagining sat together by the window. Th...

Here, in the fist of my hand, is time— I grip it with all my strength, into marrow, bone, and skin.   For many days, many tears have fallen; many have crossed the far plain. Day and night they labour— without promise, forbidden to think, granted no holiday by sun, moon, or star.   Here, clouds arrive on schedule; on the earth, raindrops fall like traps of death in disaster. Love’s foolish call echoes, but in the night’s long sleep dreams do not touch the body. The mind freezes into stillness;   Night vigil builds its restless images, disturbing the heart. On the road of the worker and the peasant philosophy is forbidden thought. Men rebel, hearing sermons, and with loose steps trample over the bodies of their own— knowing nothing of distant opinion.   The mirror of pleasure is clouded in the night; there lies the found dream of some great soul. Dawn’s golden light, in a soft wind, lays balm on the roots of ancient bones.   The universe is hushed; in the midnight...