If I speak out
I will become the accused,
If I forget
I will turn into a wasteland.
If I neither speak out
nor forget I will turn insane.
Therefore, I buried
certain intimacies on the margins
of my speech, some of my sorrow
on the peripheries of my eyes
some truth in the vicinity of my smile.
I kept them guard under the canopy
of my watchful eyes,
keen to know how they grow.
I buried some of my rage
in the colossal beaks of Jatayu,
in the colours and lines of Goya.
In the arrow tip of ‘Inquilab,’
in signatures, with the infantry
battalionof signatories.
Therefore I did not turn
insane, my forehead did not sprout
horns, nor did my fears take to
fraud or betrayal. Nor did my mistakes
wander on the borders of blood.
(“AtukonduJnanBrandhanayilla, 2012)
