At Times an Unknown Star
At times an unknown star falls down
the edge of the ravine, pretending innocence,
and something reminds me that pain began
when my father led me into those lands
where laws have never been broken.
I am somewhere else today, the television
is on; and history, that undiscovered country
I’d once thought it to be, only pushed me
into childhood where we learnt
to spread our arms wide for love and honor.
Almost everyone talks the same way about love:
they say there is this time that humbles one
as if one were that empty corner of the street
meant for the day’s litter, when the heart
can’t believe it is hiding, startling it
into a thousand starlings, flying through
the light, rousing others to flight.
I’d begin to believe my country was different,
that poetry and science and religion
walk still the same road; they could deceive;
that the clutch in the throat is made
of moonlight and rushes in the shallows of the river.
Down the street a water faucet is open,
gushing into the gutter. Another star falls
as I wait, and the time inside me rises
to the edge of my life like long shadows
falling across the grass that has lost its green.
Bulbuls begin to sing from nearby trees once again;
like many others I realize I live
for just one such moment, when pain
with its invisible mouth closes around the rim
of my glass, and I stare at this bared heart,
a clown in a circus with his perpetual smile.
JAYANTA MAHAPATRA
The Hudson Review
Summer 2014
At times an unknown star falls down
the edge of the ravine, pretending innocence,
and something reminds me that pain began
when my father led me into those lands
where laws have never been broken.
I am somewhere else today, the television
is on; and history, that undiscovered country
I’d once thought it to be, only pushed me
into childhood where we learnt
to spread our arms wide for love and honor.
Almost everyone talks the same way about love:
they say there is this time that humbles one
as if one were that empty corner of the street
meant for the day’s litter, when the heart
can’t believe it is hiding, startling it
into a thousand starlings, flying through
the light, rousing others to flight.
I’d begin to believe my country was different,
that poetry and science and religion
walk still the same road; they could deceive;
that the clutch in the throat is made
of moonlight and rushes in the shallows of the river.
Down the street a water faucet is open,
gushing into the gutter. Another star falls
as I wait, and the time inside me rises
to the edge of my life like long shadows
falling across the grass that has lost its green.
Bulbuls begin to sing from nearby trees once again;
like many others I realize I live
for just one such moment, when pain
with its invisible mouth closes around the rim
of my glass, and I stare at this bared heart,
a clown in a circus with his perpetual smile.
JAYANTA MAHAPATRA
The Hudson Review
Summer 2014
