Hacked
Flawlessly neat from below
'Rupture is her home/She carries inside the bag'
Hacked
Flawlessly neat from below
A woman
Is a continuous rupture
Searing deep
Through her body and soul
Rupture is her home
She carries inside the bag
Of her skin
She lives inside it
Her entire life
Whenever I see the earth
Cracked I peep into
The dark crater
To look for the woman
Lost inside it
(Durga Prasad Panda is a bilingual poet and critic. He edited a Reader on Jayanta Mahapatra for Sahitya Akademi. )