Benaras—Forty Years Later

Subhransu Maitra

I fail to take my stand. 

My city has drifted away. 

This city threatens to engulf me. 

Though the Sarnath Stupa is another 

                          scarred bodhi tree 

brick-built, of withering telos, 

and though, enamoured of the decrepit dome, 

a devotee in her rapture 

may decide to have it tattooed on her thigh, 

and though I’ve once more plodded 

round the massive girth after long years 

and taken pictures of 

the forbidding mournful brooding dome, 

as it holds in amused yet implacable view 

twenty three chasm centuries 

of unpurged ravening through history, 

centuries of lust rage, power and glory 

of mire-and-fury imagination, 

throbbings of flesh and blood,    

I have lost the city I knew. 

Another city, another chasm 

threatens to engulf me and enchant. 

Do I see a voiceless ghost 

welling up eloquently 

in the chasm?      

(April ’25)