On the Day of Your Escape

On the day of your escape,
lotuses bloom in the sky.
And I can walk, finally, on the thin film
of the mercury of my sorrow.

On the day of your escape,
the sunflowers in my garden laugh uproariously
like a bouquet of shameless whores;
their voices like the echo
of the explosion of your silence.

On the day of your escape
the gunpowder of your memories
falls with the intensity of untimely rains;
and penetrating the pores of my body
like uninvited sawdust
cruelly amuses like Chinese torture.

Tegucigalpa – I

Have you been to Tegucigalpa, silu bhāi?
Tegucigalpa?
From Bhubaneswar to Bombay,
from Bombay to Sao Paulo,
from Sao Paulo to the city of dreams,
and from the city of dreams to
Tegucigalpa.

The sky like the shadow
of a hundred and seventeen year old champā tree;
the smile of the locals smooth like
the cheeks of Madhu Sapré;
and heavy like their middle-aged exiles
in Sao Paulo; a little like your moustache silu bhāi;
it is there, but not quite.

The appliqué work of the tribals;
half-ripe cunts;
frankies of tortillas and shredded pork;
toy toilet pans as small as ones left thumb;
one can get everything Tegucigalpa.
What should I have got for you?

There,
poems carry the shadows of
the masculinities of rivers;
slippers dancing on the breeze over garbage dumps
carry the touch of the feet of Jisu.
There blood froths out with each suck
of the nipple of my lover.

Can you see Tegucigalpa silu bhāi?
Tegucigalpa?

Celebration

December’s cold does not fall any longer
like the hunger of shivering sharks;
the stars are no longer visible through the eye of your city;
red means blood now;
green stands in for the intoxication of false histories;
saffron is the colour of disquiet; black,
the certitudes of opposition.

But,
does this mean that dark nights will not dream
strange psychedelic nightmares,
and velvet mites shall not bathe in showers of vermilion?
does this mean our intimate dejections
will not wear the loin clothes of renunciation,
and the green hilsās of our illegitimate hopes
will not swear to brotherhood?

Come,
let’s mix colours,
let us distribute rainbows.

(Translated from the Oriya by the author.)