“… his international reputation has been compared to that of Wordsworth…”
The Hindu Sunday, Jan 29, 2006
“Jayanta Mahapatra is what you would expect a poet to be -- shy, pensive, measuring his words as if he were about to share a secret…”
The India Today, September 22, 1997
“… Here, at last, the poet is speaking to me. This is poetry one likes to read, to hear. A poetry that should last.”
The Daily Star, Saturday, January 10, 2004
Relationship
(1981 Indian ‘Sahitya Academy Award’ Wining Poem)
Jayanta Mahapatra
Smashwords Edition
Relationship
By Jayanta Mahapatra
Visit poet’s homepage at www.jayanatamahapatra.com
Based on the publication of the version published by
Chandrabhaga Society, Tinkonia Bagicha, Cuttack, 1999
Republished with permission from the poet.
Published in 2011 by patternGraphic
patternGraphic,
NAC Market, Sector-18,
Rourkela, India
First DigiBooks Edition : 2011
Current Samshwords Edition: 2011
© 2011, All rights reserved by Jayanta Mahapatra.
Digital Editions rights owned by patternGraphic, India.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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PG2011B1
Table of Contents
Once again one must sit back and bury the face
in this earth of the forbidding myth,
the phallus of the enormous stone,
when the lengthened shadow of a restless vulture
caresses the strong and silent deodars in the valley,
and when the time of the butterfly
moves inside the fierce body of the forest bear,
and feel the tensed muscle of rock
yield to the virtuous water of the hidden springs
of the Mahanadi,
the mystery of secret rights that make up destiny;
and to clasp the slow slopes of stone again
that ascend to the realm of the dead,
slopes that stroke the mind
with their quiet faces of sorrow,
like that of old men curling for warmth
in the winter sun,
and of young ochre-clad prophets
laden with silent fulfilment of tomorrow.
We have come as dreams disguised that pinned us down,
artisans of stone,
messengers of the spirit,
twelve hundred artless brown flowers in passion
to the night in humble brotherhood,
aerial roots of a centuries-old banyan tree;
not taking lives seriously
for our lives are only of the seeds of dreams,
forgetting the cruelties
of ruthless emperors who carved peaceful edicts
on blood-red rock,
forgetting our groans and cries,
the smells of gunsmoke and smoldering flesh,
forgetting the tactics and the strategy
that led to the founding of the infinite distance
inside our watery skulls.
Time
and the boat,
and the initiation into the mystery of peace;