Dibyendu's WallScript

Small words— she never speaks them.   In a mind half-hidden, bound in silence, her eyes say everything to mine.   Words for the sake of words, monotonous and pale,   sometimes heard while love is weaving its net.   One night, words blossom in the mouth—   a sudden nightmare, a room gone dark;   a solitary soul in the lamp of midnight,   trying to hide every dream-breath, yet revealed—   on the breast of clouds they long to drift away.   Among the insulted, countless spoken words—   one night, when time stumbled out of order,   she almost said the unspoken things,   but hid them, and chose not to leave.   In sleep and dream I see— who can tell these things?   At dawn’s edge, the heart cries in liquid weakness;   blossoms of spring, Kathakali in Brajabuli.   I have listened with care, in utmost secrecy—   you can tell her heart by the rhythm of birds in flight.   Again and again in our gaze the river...

[ Chorus – all voices] Where are the values now? Who sold them, who bought them? We climbed the stair, we climbed the stair— and never looked back down.   Verse 1 In the prison of despair, men barter eye for eye, blow for blow— and the leaders pound on the door of the Supreme Court like it’s the drum of victory.   On the street, water drips on time— never late, never early. The bee has flown away with the life-insurance payout. The comrade climbs the dais— marches with the kirtan singers.   [ Chorus] Where are the values now? Who sold them, who bought them? We climbed the stair, we climbed the stair— and never looked back down.   Verse 2 On the footpath— a beggar woman’s breast under the red-bordered sari. The broker’s hand slides a folded slip. Rabindranath smiles from a glass case— no dust will touch him now.   Parties, parties, parties— bicker under the banyan. Justice, ethics, art tucked into a biscuit packet. An industrialist grins in the crowd. Behind glas...

At the frontier rises a mountain’s weight of rage, Inequality’s own wall; the fevered race, in age on age, Keeps no account of how the river’s current runs, In mirrored life, desire dreams of yet new kingdoms won.   Thus living, language only forges a prepared facsimile; The old inhabitants revive at exiles’ battered entry. Those lost in thought, weighed by the native sons’ revolt, Build nations that are never mankind’s beating-heart result.   Illusion’s bonds keep rhythm with sin’s decline, While gainless are the words; the selfish continent aligns Itself on wrong, injustice — raising daily power On heartless ground, where politics corrodes by hour.   From disputes of land is born the force that takes The sword from its own name, from the self it breaks.   On the road to the cremation-ground, it brings The grief of kinlessness — not patricide, but springs Of chaos that slay the child, and leave to heirs-to-come The sure sign of the alleyway whose end is dumb;  ...

Within the swollen heart of civic pride, Rise brazen towers whose roots are sunk in clay Compacted from the nameless dead; beneath, They breathe no more, yet hold the weight entire, While Peace, in garments pale, attends the throne, Her tongue a mask, her hand in tyrant’s grasp.   Here murder walks in state; the brother’s hearth Is torn by petty feuds; the desert wind Brings vultures swarming over funeral biers; The mast is splintered, yet the mariner Binds rope to rope and braves the storm again. The stream runs red, the womb of life defiled; The flood of wrath and whispered treachery Bears on its tide the rusted swords of trust.   Man unto man becomes the sharpened blade, Our hands made weapons by our own design; The city cries of them and us, till all Are drawn within the same devouring snare. The boneyard rises where the temple stood, Its ashes cast at Sorrow’s naked feet; Yet pride still climbs the stair, and in his palm Clasps what he deems the sceptre of his right. ...

Far along the way it was evening— and at the turn of the road, eyes like the rain-bird’s longing gaze.   A woman in white, with an orange-bordered sari, stood at her doorway, sleep still upon her lashes, a quiet smile playing at her lips.   On one side, green fields; on the other, the city’s steel; on one flank a dinghy drifts on water, the traveller’s step falters— in the delayed joy of a tranquil face, the wave breaks through his weariness.   Ahead, an endless darkness, a net of unknown fate; a luckless boatman finds dry land in the whirlpool.   The traveller remembers home, the hearth, yet wanders in the maze of roads, haunted by memories left far behind.   In the hush of evening, in a forgotten spring, the woman comes to sit in the courtyard. Once, in the mind, there was a bird that tricked life in the dark.   The sky, a kohl-black blue— come, let us paint the sun; already the lamp is lit at the basil altar, its symbol of light journeying to the farthes...

Long ago, in the first warmth of sun, I left all my fair delights in the hollow, empty lanes of Gor Gobindpur; and thus I have no lament now.   The cast-off bin of memory is all that remains for me to ruminate— a pauper’s life in recollection. Those who were with me at dawn are no longer here; they once spoke to me of hope and of expectation, and I dwelt long among them, merciful in my heart.   I would repay their kindness in the weight of paddy or of rice, yet such is beyond my means— for the fields are barren.   The labour was there, and the body loved them, yet I did not suffer them to draw too near the precinct of my heart. Sometimes by error, or by the urging of a deep aversion, I hastened to the great road of departure.   No impulse of wrath remains, nor can hatred dwell in me. Those who once lifted the hand of affliction, who turned their backs— in loving them I lost my way again and again in the middle of the road.   Each moment was loud with the insult ...

Conscience, blind, sat quietly beside sin. In the blue sky, a shroud of cloud— lust flared like a low-born flame.   When life slipped from truth, inside the snake’s shed skin death lay bewildered— the body’s form still powerful, but those who should cross over will never reach the other side.   Will no one speak for another’s sake? The coins for passage— each clutched to its own chest.   When you try to name the lamp of the sky, the demon comes down with lightning speed.   Better sadness than off-key monsoon tears, or the false joy that burns the earth at the borders of entitlement.   Everyday swimmers drown in nets of numb indulgence. All know death will come; ahead, only desert— yet where to go?   I prefer to stay close to the earth, to live in the mud. This is my sin— this is where I am.   Is it the curse of the primal age or the culture of civilization? The killer will not smear blood and salt upon his own skin.   On endless empty roads walk b...

Will the galaxy remain after death?   The morning’s blue Aparajita has withered at the feet of the Nilkantha, crumpled like paper.   Will any cry remain in the shapeless air?   The bleat of a young goat blends into the market’s noise, ears dulled by habit.   The day will come to break the wall of obstacles.   From the city truck white smoke billows, mosquito eggs quiver.   What does it matter if ants are slaughtered under careless feet?   Street dogs cry— stones are thrown, civilization taught in every word.   The earth’s familiar climate fits human comfort; with smiles and pleasures we forget flesh and blood.   In the world, age grows; then comes the limp life, gas, acidity, heartburn, high blood pressure, diabetes.   No one ever told me to bear the pain of another kind— immortality’s taste burns away daily.   As easily as nature was returned to nothing, so too will disobedient fates arrive at the doorstep, taking us to the land of...

The window slot—open, shut— holds a sparrow, frozen mid-flight, its wings caught in the machinery of motion.   Those who are caged— who wrote their fate? What devil’s script, what trick of destiny painted spring in blood, hardened the paddy fields?   Chains must be broken— the wind is wild with strength. Let it remain, even in the blink of sightless eyes.   A splash of water soaks the feathers. Tell your conscience— I will not lose the map to you.   However strong the gears of the machine, I will find the old mark again. Wherever you are, whatever tears you shed, I will cross that narrow bridge with you.   They want me— they want you too. Civilization demands human sacrifice, but the bird still wants to fly.   In this locked prison of Kansa, Vasudeva weeps. The barrier is broken for the sake of human nature, yet blood and mud cry all around.   My gaze slips past it, to the delta of freedom— far away, beyond the narrow slot, the bird flies out, leaving ...

I will love you as my own, I will love you if I find you alone. Why keep me far? Draw me close— I can drift, longing, through seas of blood, through wars, carrying the dead far away, through mire, tears, and sweat, through life itself, barefoot over barbed wire toward the city of civilization.   I can paint with dreams until my eyes are full— even in heaps of rotting waste I can kneel in devotion, in deep worship of the Divine, seeking the path of justice, my chest swelling with pride.   In the stillness, in solitude, love grows; wrinkles deepen with age, and the pain of parting fades, slowly, slowly.   You can give love— love even in my death-pain, when my eyes hold a bloodless fear and evening falls in the month of Shravan. In my destitute chest, reverence rises.   In the storm-stream of Kalboishakhi, rain-wet women call— my skin thrills with awareness. Who comes, who takes me? Whose am I?   I seek the doorway in the worm-eaten door of a householder’s wall; th...

They led him far along the starlit road, where constellations walked the horizon’s edge, and for ages untold had watched, silent custodians of the night.   He had prepared himself— a face forever lit with joy, knowing that nothing was dearer than the knowing itself. Pride lifted like a banner in the wind, awake beyond the waking, drawing wisdom from the hollow air, digging into hard earth with bare nails, finding water in a barren land by no machine, only the old miraculous will.   This strange man had walked half the turning world on foot; the costliest treasures rose above all price, and the fear of death was a heavier thing than the fear of men— and that, too, he had mastered. Perhaps something would be, perhaps not— he stood unshaken either way, granting existence no more weight than the shadows it cast.   In the heritage of the unflinching, he conquered pain; in darkness, only the keen seal of recognition was his light. He had looked upon a thousand years of history ...