Two Poems by Amanita Sen

Justice for Abhaya 

 

And how we keep waiting 

for justice to be served, 

like it is the much-awaited 

rains in a summer-stricken land. 

 

But while the rains fall

in all inevitability-

a loverly plunge of the skies 

to meet with the land and the seas; 

 

justice has no such care. 

At the behest of the flexed muscles 

of power, currency the common name-

 it could be the clouds, dissipative. 

 

Meanwhile they keep waiting

the hapless parents and a few defeatists 

for Abhaya‘s miraculous court-win. 

We owe it to her- a firmly reclaimed night,

for a sleepy lot a sure awakening.

 

 

A passerby

 

You don’t carry in your voice 

the din and bustle of your land

or the pride of its much-sung glory. 

 

Your eyes do not hold the glimmer

of the lights that never go off 

in your hustling city. 

They dim off with each strain of gloom

 entailing the travails of life. 

 

You belong to the nameless scape

in a far-off land where the sun 

lightly hovers on the playful river

laughing at the nodding plants. 

 

It is a timeless place too where

evenings round-off with temple-bells

and seasons bear their fruits loyally. 

You are the ageless being 

 

sitting at the top of a hillock 

watching the continuum flow by. 

A passerby couldn’t simply pass you by. 

You sealed the moment with an

exchanged smile. 

 

 

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