Desert

By Prof. HEM BARUA, M.A

 

III

In a silver night
when maidens with delicate thoughts of love
grow restless under the silver-spell,– 
a man,
with primitive negligence beaming forth
moves along the metalled path-way
with tottering steps
through the city’s avenue of wealth:
the moon in her radiance
illumines
the sky, washed with a splash
of blue and the dirty gutters
along the factory lane
where rats peep and peer
grow valuable with noise– 
And there
dwells the crowd of labour-eaten,
sunken, machine-wrecked souls:
civilisation’s dregs,
And so progresses
the onward march of ages
from star to star
and pole to pole,
smothering the blood vessels
of billion-million souls
of an unhappy world, 
Souls,
whose experiences of life,
limited and sparse
are rounded with Poverty, Hunger and Dirt–
the eternal trio,
narrowing the reaches of death.
It’s the history of the poor,
sad, down-trodden and miserable,
proclaiming the universe
the savage march
of civilisation
through a barren desert.^*

^* This is second installment of the author’s Desert poems group in Assamese original translated into English by the author. The first installment appeared in Triveni, Sept. 1944.