Nabakanta Barua Poems

The fire of the palaash has gone out now.
In the saal and sotiyaan woods
Spring-storms of days past —
Days of the Burmese invasion.
...

We housed them in prisons
For they wanted a home,
We killed them for they wanted eternal life
Then bulldozed their prisons into fields of corn
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The corded belt of my mother’s spinning wheel
was a mystery to me
spool after spool is used up
the distended bobbins pile up in the basket
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Ah, it is pleasant
We are sitting ,simply sitting
Sitting silently.
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God gave man intellect.
He could go insane with it.
His heart full of blood
could not be trustful.
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The fossil heaved its stony sigh
Moaning:
God’s failures have caused,
All his tears to helpless man.
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Last night
Someone poured ink into Umiam
How the streetlights emitted darkness!
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Once we went aboating
On the Ganges…………
The pale winter moon rose above the old cemetery
We remember we talked
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Offerings to the mother have been washed
with brother’s bolld;
To satisfy the mother earth
Offering’s flesh has been cooked in her breast’s milk!
...

God gave man brains
To achieve lunacy therewith.
With his body plenished with blood
The heart took on the task of mistrust.
...