Wednesday, July 1, 2020

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

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