POETRY: (A) Liable (translated from Hindi)

Note: In the translation, I have put the poem’s context in a distant past. The reason is simple: verses for the Hindi came to me while I- the man ‘in a box of wood’- stood in the courtroom. The English translation was done when those verses, once alive, had become stilled, in the solitude of my cell. [Photograph below shows 'a poet in court', courtesy The Hindu Newspaper]

Caught in a web of words
A worried man once stood
In a box of wood:
Martyr
Drunk in Silence’s Embrace.

If he heard something, he nothing said
If he said, nobody anything heard:
The why O why
Did that Man’s shadow-
Like Moon fallen from the Sky
Upon a River of Tears- by itself flow
Through terrified vales
Of terrible tales?

As if he had known
From Centuries before
Destiny’s Destination.

Raipur Central Gaol,
March 3, 2006