Poem - Mithra Neelima
Poem - Mithra Neelima
Translation - A bystander
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Pieta
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Damsel Ouseph is dead.
A perfect believer
Till this day this moment he lived
With the church and chaplains.
Let him be interred
At the local church cemetery
So said Father Seban.
Converts are never interred
There in our cemetery
Muttered the sexton John.
Ouseph was a Catholic
Wasn’t he, said the cleric
And sat in penitence.
Dame..Damsel..Damsel Ouseph!
They called him different names
Filled with endless rains of time.
Mom is a black bird, lowborn
Dad is a well bred, highborn
Fair-skinned is he thus
For the one who sired him.
It’s Joseph the rich and noble
Even the pathway pebbles
Said so in their local lore.
Ouseph grew up fair and pink
On milk eggs and meat
From where his mother was a maid.
Betrayed the river eel with his bait.
Worked as a cook
In the local saints church.
He ate and slept there
And then and thus
Jesus and Ouseph
Came close like brothers
From the same mother.
In the midnight hour Jesus
Descends from his cross
Then they play a lot
Chess and country cricket
Hopscotch and what not.
And there was evening and there was morning.
The Lord went back to his cross.
And one day to Ouseph
The fair and pink one with a girlish charm
And a saintly face
To him the junior priest
New and young revealed himself.
Jesus Mary and Joseph!
First rains falling on the
Dark moonstones!
Ouseph heaved like
The panting darkness.
Lightning streaked across
His belly many times.
After the night he stayed away
The day after and the next day
The Lord kept himself away.
On the third day he shivered
With fever and died
Damsel Ouseph.
All who came to bury him
Ate bread and had coffee
Yet none shouted to bury,
The one who had
No church to bury,
At whatever fucking place he has.
And there was evening and there was night.
The guy on cross wept
Looking at Ouseph utterly bereft.
The snow melted
On Golgotha.
It rained.
The mount came crashing down
Engulfing the mother and son.
Pieta could be sculpted
This way as well
The guy damned to be hanged
Said thus in his prayer to the Lord.