Poems – Jhilam Adhikary

Dark Green

The colour of green on blood soaked dirt
Which gives most of them their setting
When I think of this beauty and brutality together,
The image in my head is dark green.
Post colonial literature,
Or Post modern or whatever
Not Commonwealth though,
Since each is unique.
The art of 20^th Century
Anti-romantic, realism, legends and myths
Sung by beautiful, brutal stories.
A man whose greed led to his death,
And his womansang naked in court,
Cultural clashes, loss of identify
Like a tempest tossing a rotten boat.
Exhaustion, crisis, great depression
The war had  freshly ended,
A worker looking up the sky
Kill him instead, he said:
Begging to save the landscape.
A man who loved his ruthless tribe,
And was broken to see it helpless,
A man who followed oracles,
And killed himself being reckless.
Miserable, isolated, with a bleeding forehead
The guilt of a woman’s tongue,
A doctor trying to heal his patients,
With a few mere emotions.

A man who couldn’t sell his poems,
And died name-less and hungry,
A man who suffered foryears in jail,
To earn the freedom of his country.
The colour death, the colour of a mess
The colour of darkness, confused delusions,
Dark Green remains a mystery.