Dukha Of The Straw Poem by Bishnupada Sethi

In our small village, where the dust roads end,
a stranger drifted in on a wind no one named—
vacant gaze, brows knotted like old rope,
eyes adrift in some private storm.
His hair a wild nest, his robe a map of tears,
he looked like sorrow given bones and breath.

The children first saw him
atop the landlord's golden heap of paddy straw,
curled small against the sky.
Stray dogs chased him there—
then, finding no threat in his silence,
lay down beside him like sentinels of mercy.

We feared him at first,
then pitied, then loved.
Someone brought rice still warm from the fire,
someone a faded shirt,
someone a name: Dukha, the Sorrowful One.
We spun tales around him—
a scholar broken by books,
a lover abandoned at the river's edge—
anything to explain the quiet that clothed him
better than any garment we gave.

He never spoke.
Only those eyes—clear, depthless,
kind as a child who has forgotten cruelty—
held us fast.
We came each evening to watch him
sit among the straw,
palms open on his knees,
as though waiting for the world to return
something it had stolen long ago.

Winter arrived with its thin, sharp teeth.
One dawn the dogs whined at the heap's edge.
Dukha lay still,
his face smoothed at last,
as if sleep had finally granted him
the peace we could not.

We carried him on our shoulders
through the same lanes that once shrank from him.
We lit his pyre with the best wood,
sang the songs we sing for our own blood.
No one knew his real name,
yet every heart claimed him brother.

He came from nowhere,
left for nowhere,
and in the short space between
taught us how gently
a broken man can mend the world
simply by letting it love him.