In the half light of half hope
Light flickered on my benumbed senses
Credibility surfaced and died down.
Through that long corridor
Reason approached but walked away
As my mind was long distanced from me.
Life’s battlefield drown reason when
Words elbow each other out
Galloping like horses in a swoon.
They breach the front line of rights
Falling off sideways and tumbling in
A terrain where reason has no grounds.
Can I sever relationship in my chain mail
And steeled helmet in life’s battlefield
Where chaotic disorder suggest confrontation.
As Humayun fought Sher Shah’s army
Didn’t a mere water-carrier save his life?
Destiny sees us to find every tomorrow!
The cloying taste of ambition in life
With wolves hungry under a grey sky
Await all over again to dupe by stealth.
Streaming in
The cushion in the small of my back
Help me to find answers to life’s riddles
Lying supine to face many reasons in life.
I cultivate my mind to germinate
Dismissing all contradictions that rears up
The heads with puzzling intrigues.
We trace out meaning in myths
And weave tales to rationalise the past
To face the dystopian world of reality.
There amber lights turn the path hazy
Providing no cue to the path of hazards
But wait to maul that Samaritan zeal.
It didn’t take a Ravana to destroy Rama’s peace
Nor a Rama and Lakshman to punish Ravana and Indrajit;
Life readily restructures devious ways into a pattern.
It is against our grain to pledge a whole lot in life
And bolster our hopes with conservative morals
For, we ourselves leap into that old pattern of ruin.
Navamalati Neog Chakraborty
Navamalati Neog Chakraborty has served as a professor of English in Colleges at Kohima, Dimapur and Guwahati. She served as a guest professor at Calcutta University in the Comparative Literature Department. She has translated works of the stalwarts of Assamese Literature – biographies, dramas and novels. She has several anthologies to her name- in English and in Assamese. Navamalati Neog Chakraborty is a bilingual poet, translator, critic and short story writer.
