~Arun Budhathoki~
Trapped Amongst Hue Ja Fort & The Modernist
Calm, calm against the thriving of the dark
A dark autumnal room brings and carries off the pattering rough winds from the wooden window. Thatched roof gazes the swelling sky, and the sinking eye plays hide and seek. An old cottage lost somewhere in Camuntu stands still and frozen in front of an old tree.
The room is complete black. A small reddish volcano vomiting smoky lava slaps the resting figure with pausing sparkle. The screeching of window is still heard. A bright horrible reddish thread is pulled down the black wools. A temporary bright stitch of the
careless, old, stubborn, childish and melancholy room with the dim thread weaves a body lying on a broken bed. Soon the ashtray engulfs the bidi with the sound of drumming rain and cancer’s cough with the smell of last ashes. The unsecured bank on which the unconscious lantern is sitting desolately pukes heavy chilly phlegm on the coarse naked floor. He glares the stubborn forces of nature and cocks his old body—dumdum—the window is closed. ‘Too much of contemplation drowning in darkness, need some light.’ The lantern is lit and a glow infuses creatures living in the semi-conscious room: naked muddy floor, a broken bed, an antique ashtray, portraits hung on the unearthed wall,
and wooden ceiling.
The weak glassy vision strikes a sit on the shit bed. White long hair and beard shakes dying hand’s friendship with white bed sheet, pillow, and his attire. ‘9:30 pm and the sound of heart cracks.’ He sighs and stares at the clouded frame. A mythical figure
is seen. Some supernatural force lost in transition twirl his subtle mind. ‘Such a damn hypothetical philosophy is the utmost driver of one’s life, so pity of them who follow it and me…’ Sour seed of his eyes breaks into droplets of pieces and rolls down softly, tenderly.
‘Me left alone, all lone.’ A sound of sob is heard with a raising fist in the vain dim air. ‘At the end of a relationship all counts is religion, caste and wealth, not love, not love’. A crack. Or a heartbreak. The joy of living? Following the humane emotions, existence, and not rephrasing one’s destiny by the pen of archaic scriptures, salvation and moksha, cuts the crap. He feels a disgusting remorse rising in his heart and quickly gives a sleeping tablet to self and to the lantern. The darkness seizes his grief. Still goes the rain.
The damned river, down to the lower part of the village, is flowing wildly, furiously with
swollen and dirty face. A man is seen sitting on a rock. The sloppy hill is lush green with dense forest. Behind the angry river, three hills stand in a line with arms placed upon each other’s shoulder.
They are green too but no habitation exists. The man transports himself to the gates thro’ the stoned pathless path. A shortcut. The surface of ‘access the codes of ungs’ scratched. An entrance permitted. A fake idealism. A mask bypasses every masked ash.
‘Who is it?’
A young spout inhales old forest, Blood sucking creatures climb up to psychopath’s nest,
Synoptic hole injects pale pluralism, A hole inside a whole sexism, I kill myself, temporarily.
‘Old age shouldn’t burn and apathy at beginning of night.’
‘What you want?’
The lost kingdom returns my throne,
Bewitched, bitten and half gone,
I announce the tragedy,
Protagonists’ exit is the remedy,
I kill myself, temporarily.
‘Though crazy men at their beginning know light is right,
Because their swords had fused much thundering,
Imprudent men, the first oblivion by, laughing how dark
Their burly collapse mightn’t have jumped in a red bay.’
‘Where you want to stay?’
Remorse’s wave rings around detached vision,
I cut its head and bury stinky mission,
I win and loose,
Defeated and ooze,
I kill myself, temporarily.
‘Tame men who loose and talk the stars in dwell,
And unlearn, too early, they applauded it on its subsystems,
Sanguine men, near birth, who don’t see with visioning sight,
Open eyes could grasp like snows and be sway.’
‘What you are doing?’
Syncopation licks disgraceful muse,
Open sky and wonderland fuse,
Rulers and image transformers burn,
Saint’s scent shrinks and grows a single horn,
I kill myself, permanently.
‘And you, the modernist, there on the happy height,
Curse, bless, me now with your scorching tears, I do not pray.
I will go gentle into that bad night.’
The fall, decline, a history.
The crack in the cracker’s monotony.
A museum in the raging songs of Lai’s diminished mystery.
The sun goes to the west and bring in
Rage. Rage.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Arun Budhathoki ,
Kathmandu, Nepal
Issue : 2006
(Source : Pardesh.com)
