DEVI PRASAD MOHANTY

DEVI PRASAD MOHANTY

Demure Deceit

(1)

Living under false pretence,

Being proud of her shadow

And not of her own countenance

That betrays an onlooker’s glance.

An image that snatches

The attention of a highwayman;

Alas! the faster he moves

The quicker it fades away.

Is it not a mirage?

But the fault is his

Who strikes desperately at a mountain

That sends echoes

And not the real voice.

(2)

Humanly credulity,

And childlike innocence;

Are these all virtues?

That makes a man suffer

Worse even than the abyss of hunger.

And wagons of deceptive Yes’

Send shivers of No’s.

Remains at last a Crusoe

With mysteries yet unravelled

In the silence of winter.

Uncertainty only is certain here

Where he suspects his own voice.

Last Gasp

Bullets crashed to a halt.

Scratches of a judge’s pen

Went into the garbage bin

And the noose remained in hunger.

A huge crowd before the jail

And a mother’s lap is poised

For regaining its lost warmth.

Lips spell bound

And choked with emotions.

Truth defeated the hangman

For no force can ever snatch

Nor can it ever sever the link

That binds a child to its mother.

Awe stricken mother was

Fired with vollies of ecstacy.

Tears rolling down her cheeks

With the child pressed to her breasts,

She murmurs -“Ye, my son, my  breath,

you had stopped for me,

but I couldn’t stop for you”.

And the child muttered

“I am for ever yours”.

Country Churchyard

The shrill cries of the crow,

The fore runner of crimson dawn,

Can never arouse them

From their lowly recluse,

Where the mourning band

Had tuned down to a silent retreat.

Nor can they wipe out

The tears of shaken memories

Rolling down from swollen eyes

That saw them right from the cradle

Down to the lowering of the coffin.

They perished in wilderness

As they had once descended.

They were alien to treachery

And filled with pristine truthfulness,

Not affected by morbid sophistications.

Patches of grassy exuberance

Over their uncelebrated tombs

Bears testimony to their clear heart.

Their image as unblemished as ever-

A rustic never rusts;

Unnoticed, yet with noble thoughts.

DEVI PRASAD MOHANTY