The Man in the House
Your self-sufficiency hurts his gaze.
The man in the house has eyes.
Your confidence scrapes against his tympanum.
The man in the house has ears.
Your space makes him shrink.
The man in the house has skin.
Your focus upsets his calm.
The man in the house has a mood.
Your abandon pierces his sanity.
The man in the house has a limit to his patience.
***
In the house
the man in the house
belongs neither to himself nor the house.
His houses have all been left behind.
He is forever lost in the chicanery of time
that shows him houses and selves in dreams.
All day long he is looking for the myth that made him.
All night he fights the house till just before dawn
he is subdued to become house himself in sleep.
Only to be awakened by the sun to become man.
***
You cannot live with the man in the house.
You can choose
to live in the house without the man.
Or with the man without the house.
You can be courageous to refuse both.
Before the Flood
Hour by hour day wanes into night.
I am quiet by these shores
letting the aftermath of battle
come to me like revenge foretold.
There is a stir in the stars they say.
I see them winking at play
a Ring o’ Roses as they rise and fall.
But I have already hearkened to the call
of the disaster whose neck I will wring
while all portents sing to me from the dark.
There will be a flood they say
and I have pitched my gopher wood ark
unto which I shall bring two of all I have.
I am sorry, dearest, you will be left behind.
You who took my all but were never won.
You who insisted you were the sun
while I some planet mean, by body and spirit
destined to circumambulate your glory.
My proprietor, my master, my feudal lord
You who taped me to the clock
and made me serve you by its light
accounting for every second of my days and nights
You chauvinist, the only one of your kind
I am not sorry to leave you behind.
Had you let yourself been dyed by me
there would, you see, have been no fuss
For clearly there would then be two of us
and the love hoarded and this law upheld.
But now, man, I pair with someone else
who hems the anklet of me with silver bells.
And righteous you who breaks not one law
how, dearest, I beseech,
would you turn this around
and permit a breach only to be found
on safe land?
My godly fear fails totally to understand.
Keep your laws straight and perish by them
the way I have died all these years.
And yes, you needn’t even pity your tears.
The flood swears to swallow them to the last drop.
Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College, Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Looking forward to her fourth collection of poems, she writes to urgently test/taste words on her tongue, pulse, moods, agitation, abstraction and satire. Her recent poetry is featured in Chandrabhaga, The Punch Magazine, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing, and RIC Journal among others. When not overthinking, she reviews and sporadically curates and translates poetry from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand.