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Sahitya Akademi
SemaphoreAuthor(s): Samartha VashishthaSource: Indian Literature, Vol. 47, No. 4 (216) (July-August 2003), pp. 62-63Published by: Sahitya AkademiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23341121 .
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Samartha Vashishtha
Revolt
It's only when a moment bursts like a grain of maize
that we need to count our fingers again. Anaemic leaders feel their pacemakers in rallies
The measured voice of the economist
wonders as ever on TV:
Where on earth should living cost the earth?
Even poetry loses its natural sting of suffering. Winter hailstorms forget when to leave
someone somewhere we've always trusted
shuts His eyes to us.
Ifs now that our roots demand motion arms stretch out for want of purpose
and every slogan speaks but one tongue: Let's be moving, friends
before the last door of the evening is slammed on us.
Semaphore
I don't feel like a man
soul!
From within I burn
to rebel.
Tear apart this punctured sky in one place, heap the stars
and set them all
aflame!
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Rebellion
the word of the sword
once and for all.
Manhood is all I have
you waste yours to produce another flock of geese.
Flags and flags and flags black and white, big and small
tricolours
flying at half-mast.
Rebellion
once and for all....
Church
My god who keeps me in the dark
sits on his clouds above
puffing his Havana pipe -
(if I were a god, I would do that too).
My god with his eyes thick with marijuana and his women round and ready is making hell and heaven at astonishing speed. Out where I know light and the dust of moon; it is time
and the aroma of cracking maize
is the closest I can get to Him.
On the curtains, the pale sun
the lissom flames before my eyes— in the direct path of propagation of God's word—my yawn.
This is my moment of revelation
and I, sitting here for mischief
can feel my whistle trapped to death
somewhere deep within my lungs.
Samartha Vashishtha / 63
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