Desert

By Prof. HEM BARUA, M.A.

(i)

The flower blooms

and its sweetness ripples in the breeze:

the eye moves in frenzy

in quest of an eternal beauty.

The lotus-petals wither

and the flower fades–

We exist in darkness

under a colonnade of bombs and shells,

‘ancient-mariner’ like

on the extremity of civilisation’s

limitlessly barren desert.

(ii)

The avenue of green trees and foliage lines

radiant with April-bloom,

the way-side.

On the highway where traffic throbs

there are stones and iron,

stones and steel,

stones and pneumatic tyres

and the end-of-the world thunder

of whizzing wheels

and a pale-faced maiden,

a slim virgin

with dark hair blown–

blown by the breezes

and scattered about the curves

of the lips in soft and heavy clusters.

Her hair is dark,–

dark like the night that overshadows

civilisation’s citadel.

Enclosed within and

near the bosoms

there’s a bouquet of blood-red flowers

as though dipped in gore

flowing through Kurukshetra of yore.

Blood is cheap:

human souls are cheaper still.

And so flows the stream of blood

of the human heart

kissing the horizon

of civilisation’s limitlessly barren desert^.*

^* Translated from the original Assamese by the Author.

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