Dying Declaration
Jayan K. Cherian
Those who bore a hole through my tongue
and bound the words
imprisoned me in the dungeon of cold silence.
The blacksmiths
who tempered the pig-iron
in the blazing fire-pit of betrayal
are witnesses to the blood-stained words.
All the dreams that took birth in my solitude
are miscarried.
I prepared a funeral pyre for them
using the skeletons of the sobs
that got trapped in the throat and died.
The Spring that arrived
with a fistful of coolness
from the heart of the snow-mountains
and pushed open the fancy-window of silence
cheated me.
Even the last tongue of fire
that I’d secured from the fireworks-maker’s workshop
pledging away to him the whole of my youth
and had hidden in the treasure-chest of my eyes
has been swallowed by the Spring’s coolness.
The pyre of my dilemma
that forgot to burn itself, derides me.
The damsel of the saga who swallowed a star
and became pregnant...
Please give birth to a star-babe
over my dead-dreams.
My prowess of making fire
by winding my veins on the roller
of my ego-self and spinning it
on the arani* of my soul
has left me long since.
Through the rusty windows of the five senses
in a wriggling chariot pulled by
the mating darkness and mist--
the host with the smell of death arrives.
In the transparency of the platter
made from the flimsy word
the spice-less dish of
brain cured in tears...for dinner
Before the last propriety of the host--
the chill that surges over the roots of my hair--
laps up the last remaining warmth of breath
my dying declaration--
my witness, the prison wall where
the unblinking stare of the sentinel
with eyelids chopped off, is fixed.
_________
*churning of arani wood to make fresh fire is part of a Vedic ritual.
Copyright © 1998 Jayan K.Cherian