Don't Unearth My Bones Poem by Prafulla Kumar Panda

Let me be crushed under the dust
let me lie buried,
let, upon my bones, grow a multi-storied building
they can hold it aright
like my womb once held him straight
and my breast instilled in him the strength
to wield his bestial instinct!
what's new this time?
only he has covered a distance of centuries
and has walked out of the heart of jungles
into the concrete world of glitterati
carrying along the savageryhis bestial instinct!

as soon his faith make an eccentric flow
the footprints of the Lord fainter and fainter grow
nothing he hearseither preaching of a sage or teaching of a bardalthough their voices are clear,
as his hollowness is stuffed with avarice and mundane fire!

the rough hands of patriarchy- customs and codes
has further pushed me into a pathless jungle
i run and run in dark through rocky lane and fen
where the beast of superstition
follows me with its claws open
to strangulate me by usurping my freedom

i am crippled
when he turns me into an Ahalya with a curse,
or a Draupadi with a trifle pawn of disgrace;
even morei am swapped, or bartered for material gain,
ever, to my body and to my soul by inflicting indelible stain

i have 'en a puppet
if better- a living being- a cattle
sans sensibility,
sans love
past all hopes, I pine
in the dungeon of mortality

let me be crushed under the dust
let me lie buried
to bury all remorse in a pile of dust
now I return to it from where once I'd spout
away from his reach and far from his shout
let me live here in the lap of my eternal Mother,
being fanned by her love,
i can rest in peace rather.

©Prafulla Panda, India.