Konark Poem by Chittaranjan Nayak

I am the blind bend of history,
where stories forget how to return.
I am Dharmapada's unfinished echo
a myth still breathing under stone.

I am bird-flight caught mid-thought,
and the silence it leaves behind.

I keep calling you,
come closer, let's talk,
let's unzip the sea's dark appetite
before it swallows itself again.

But you respond only in silence,
placing your absence
right next to me,
as if it were enough.

O Sun God!
step down from your burning geometry.
O carved bodies of stone desire!

stop pretending.

you are still frozen
Burn again.
Not once, Again and again.

Are you my crown of pride?
Or just an old wound of fate
that learned how to look beautiful?

Are you twelve hundred Sculptors at work
or Dharmapad's 's final fall into legend?

Who is worshipped here
when light and darkness take turns?
Who keeps playing that flute
half longing, half ruin,
making even love feel restless?

Konark is not a place.
It is a question that refuses rest.

Konark is the answer that never stays still.
Konark is the dream
that calls itself salvation
but never leaves the body behind.