Reconstruction Poem by Pushpa Ratna Tuladhar

The meek and mild man
Turned his heart into stone
Closed his eyes tight
And wove by his fingers
The ropes of destruction
Annihilation and obliteration
……………………………..
(In every part of his country,
for his country’s sake?)

Before the every eyes,
He heaped up in the earth
The purely white cotton
Picked from the cotton plant
Matured in the trash dumped
By the rushing tempest.
(Stressed by his countrymen
To rescue from heat and cold?)

In the past or bygone days,
Only a picture in a frame
Hanging in the wall is he
And only named
The insect on the dry leaves
Floating in a pond is he –
A meek and mild
A modest and self-effacing.
(no self-determination of writing
Speaking and living?)

Before flattened himself
Like a dried fish
He forged in anguish
On the anvil
The solidity of the iron
Turned into brittle foil
Gagging the flame of fires
That annihilate and obliterate’

The watery and formless embryo
In the freezing womb
Of the man toughed as stone
Congealed steadily
Contoured the face
Blinked the eyes
Stirred its arms and legs
…………………………………..

He gulped the fire
That melted iron
Felt in his throat like
The syrupiness and sugariness
Of the hot steamed coffee
For the present-day
Turned totally back to tomorrow
For the totally new cadence of
Innovation and reconstruction
In his poetry.

June 12,2006