Procession Poem by Gayatri Phukan

Procession

1
A grandmother
was sitting
by the waterbody
created recently
I went near her
and listened
intently
She was murmuring
The crop of bara* paddy
raised here last time
returned good harvest
really good, you know.

2
I too had a pucca house
I don't know
Whose field was dug up
To make the brick
To build the wall of my house.
I hardly gave a thought to that.
My abode of leisure
Got joined unknowingly
In the parade of scream
of the lifeless field

3
Dumb look of the lone mango plant
on the mound
lying in the middle of the field.
Like the look of the white goat
Being pulled to the sacrificial altar
Reek of raw blood.
Heaviness of sorrow in the bosom
We all are in the parade of demolition.
Slogan of progress and modernisation
on the lips.
The lifeless hides of the fields
are dangling at our houses
Famine is waiting at our doorstep
Please offer a few morsels

*bara - kind of paddy with sticky rice
Original: Assamese: Gayatri Phukan