Utkal- A Land Of Paradox! Poem by Debasish Mishra

Ageless temples stare the skies
And culture trickles like beauty from eyes;
Lost is the traveller in the serene ambience
Filled with tranquil grandeur and peace in abundance...

Beauty is seen in the migrant birds,
In the ethos of past or the poets' words;
Nature smiling in the forests dense
And streets fogged with sweet incense...

But behind the glitter that this land wears,
There is a sight that shocks and scares -
The pain, or the curse, of acute poverty
Where hunger rides over childhood-spree!

How can two things, so different, exist -
Like school and skull, favour and fist;
A land of paradox is the state of mine:
A fusion, I swear, of shock and shine!