The  She- Florist

Dr. Sudhansu Dash

Flowers of different colors fragrance and softness

I have garlanded in my two palms

The needle punctures my fingers many a times

I do not know

What makes me so elated?

 Integrating one heart with the other

This desperate joy has compelled me to cry many a times

From that day

I have not seen my face coming in the mirror.

The garden looking beautiful from a distance

From the soil to the fragrance

From the root to the green foliage

All are me.

O traveler, could you admit

You have never become mine even once for a moment?

My whole life passed in making garlands for you.

Seasons appeared and disappeared

One boils my blood, one vibrates my bone marrow

One soaks my eyes, the other shivers my dreams

It is also not that I am unchanced

It is not that silence has not come

Even if with thousands of desire to burn

Has ever a the lamp aflamed  of its own?

What silence is it?

The more I want to disturb it, the more it is silent

While beautifying the princess’s eyes with dark colors

I have stopped a little

I see the morning of my widowhood hiding behind her to eye balls

No butterfly has ever shocked my flower

The spring never touched my body

The dew drop avoided my vermillion line and my injured palms

But for what inevitable sin I committed

I do not know.

I gave garlanded the prince and the princess many a times

Prepared by myself

That moment

I listen from my within

The suppressed tears of a woman

I hide them in me

Lest their pleasure will be washed away with the tears of my eyes

Every year spring will come,

Garlands will be prepared by the wrinkled palms

One day I will see my garden desperate and destroyed

My age soaked by the merciless air

There will be no branch, no leaf, no flower in my tree

There will only be

The suspended threads, the broken needle and the depetalled flowers

The crude stretcher and the broom

Only the jackal’s voice sounding from the backyard.