The Lioness Poem by SOUMANA DASGUPTA

She was sorrow's twin sister. She was a breakaway lone lioness.I offer her a broken palm-tree-leaf fan. And I offer my worm-eaten brain.

An indignant dōma, the cremator of the dead, is cracking open my head. And I see him putting my head into fire to explode.

Am I then a dead body?
Am I then a corpse?

While watching myself being cremated I am falling asleep right on the funeral pyre.
And in the graveyard vultures are waking up- -one by one- - from their slumber. They are already sitting beside my heart. They are pecking at my auricle and ventricle. If vultures are in short supply just let me know and send him a letter. Send some cremated remains, offer him ash-wings. My liver deserves some airy text messages. Doesn't it, yeah?

Here the lioness and I share blood and tears on some earthen plate.

Translated by Jewel Mazhar