A POEM ON ANTI-SELF

Like a night of lost consciousness  
your intimate presence  
wordless silent pain,  
time and again  
tumbling on the rough time  
this procession of existence  
towards nonexistence  
is your intimate presence.  
Let me paint one evening.  

And then, seasons were disciplined  
but rivers were uncontrolled  
like menstruating women.  
Bathing in the moonlight  
the mountains seemed aslumber:  
like blue-lily breasts  
of women facing upward.  

In such an evening  
tortured  
and being nothing,  
I am searching my way  
sometimes moving fast— 
and then, encircling my own self  
as a blind deer  
sniffs at her own body  
feels aroused and blind  
in the soft darkness.  
For me the world is an illusion  
I am a gipsy woman,  
the inheritor of  
life, death and life-after-death.  

Yet, I am counterfeit  
I have defeated the knight chivalrous  
strange, sober, handsome,  
but imprisoned for ever  
in a horseman,  
and he being lost  
in me for eternity.  

In such an evening  
when I try to feel myself  
I am nowhere  
and you,  
hurdling over your existence  
merge into the nonexistence.  

I never think that I am a river  
of freedom  
and to get my freedom  
this is my own march  
towards my own death,  
pierced by my own arrow  
I am the cause of my own death.  
I am my own dhrupadi.  
  

Translation :
Sanat Das Patnaik