Ananya S. Guha
dogged valley
your ribs are a cage
the sloping mountains
riddle you with the heavy past
their blues trace your body
to the ancientness of myths
and even as a new script
is grafted onto your people
you fast for justice and death
those chains, those fetters
binding you deep
to the rattle of guns impervious
to your palaces and kings
rice grows wild,
men and women live,
like cattle,
and hills and valleys meditate
in halting silence.
the sloping mountains
riddle you with the heavy past
their blues trace your body
to the ancientness of myths
and even as a new script
is grafted onto your people
you fast for justice and death
those chains, those fetters
binding you deep
to the rattle of guns impervious
to your palaces and kings
rice grows wild,
men and women live,
like cattle,
and hills and valleys meditate
in halting silence.
Ananya S. Guha is a writer based in Shillong. He works at the Indira Gandhi National Open University as a senior academic.
