In
a silver night
when
maidens with delicate thoughts of love
grow
restless under the silver-spell,–
a
man,
with
primitive negligence beaming forth
moves
along the metalled path-way
with
tottering steps
through
the city’s avenue of wealth:
the
moon in her radiance
illumines
the
sky, washed with a splash
of
blue and the dirty gutters
along
the
factory lane
where
rats peep and peer
grow
valuable with noise–
And
there
dwells
the crowd of labour-eaten,
sunken,
machine-wrecked souls:
civilisation’s
dregs,
And
so progresses
the
onward march of ages
from
star to star
and
pole to pole,
smothering
the blood vessels
of
billion-million souls
of
an unhappy world,
Souls,
whose
experiences of life,
limited
and sparse
are
rounded with Poverty, Hunger and Dirt–
the
eternal trio,
narrowing
the reaches of death.
It’s
the history of the poor,
sad,
down-trodden and miserable,
proclaiming
the universe
the
savage march
of
civilisation
through
a barren desert.*
*
This is second installment of the author’s Desert poems
group in Assamese original translated into English by the author. The first
installment appeared in Triveni, Sept. 1944.