AFTER THE ACT
- Tapan
Kumar Pradhan (India)
Suddenly
The woman is no more a woman in your arms
only a bundle of flesh, bones, sweat and cold skin
smelling of damp clothes, soap, dry leaves, dead mice
floating in a deserted bathing ghat of Varanasi.
The eyes are no more the expansive blue ocean
you longed to dive in and bathe all day all night,
and swim to the end of earth, dissolving yourself
like humble lump of salt melting in a tear of ecstasy.
The breasts are no more the shy slopes of a snow peak
you climbed slowly, plucking a red cherry on your way,
squeezing the soft snow in your bare palms softly,
letting it melt away like butter in orange morning light.
The silk soft hairs are no more the misty waterfalls
In dark forests of your dreams, where you ambled alone
amid apple blossoms, damp leaves, rainbow butterflies
by a crystal stream resounding with a cuckoo’s calls.
The arm pits are no more the moist caves of darkness
mossy with warm weeds, smelling vaguely of musk
of deer lurking in a crag nearby, you followed closely
with nose alone, blindfolded, clambering on all fours.
And the moans are no more the faint sighs you heard
at midnight from fireplace of a distant mountain cave
guarded by a woman wearing only a dry bark, turning
raw meat over yellow flame for her man waiting inside…
as you look out of the window, morning’s first light striking your face,
and become aware of the local train’s screech, smoke from chimneys,
and the dry bare breasts of a woman picking garbage from roadside,
suddenly you think of every woman as a mother, or sister, not knowing
why -
and you think of the countless men who would have made love last night
to their women, having showered them with kisses and eternal promises,
and the billions of birds and animals who would be making love right now
in sunny grass fields, at their heights of ecstasy, oblivious of the
realities
of life, of destiny, of tomorrow’s hunger, and of the cold inevitable
death
and all your visions, passions, aspirations
go away suddenly, like the flaccid resignation
of a marauding lover, suddenly gone limp
after the act.
****