The Empty Womb Poem by Malay Roy Choudhury

The Empty Womb



After having layers of dust on ear lobes on breeze stitched paddy field
when cobra children started dancing around me
pointing nude fingers toward husky darkness
I saw jingled sounds of sunrise amid whispers of rain
the four squared universe seen throughsoft barrel hole of a rifle
which was encircled by a thorn crowned slogan-wet wall

After the garden came forward to receive me
dancing bells of cobra mom-dad were strewn all over grass
and cobra housewife reminded several times
she would expose and reveal the real thing

The lady whose beauty I had ravished just by a glance at her
I could glean through twisted arms of her sexless embrace
my horoscope on dazzlingliquid breast of the crab
licked with smooth kissing lips bycobra housewife

At the happy eating festival of the menu-card funeral
the sick street dog licked its own shadow from bodyfur
and over the bread crumbed map only then
ant columns marched from one country to another
(Translation of Shunya Garbha)
Ahmednagar,12 October 1997