Chicken Roast

This is a controversial poem by Malay Roychoudhury. It deals with the human rights aspect of postcolonial India.

Puff your plume in anger and fight, c**k,
            delight the owner of knife
smear sting with pollen and flap your wings
As In said: Twist the arms and keep them bent
roll the rug and come down the terrace
   after disturbed sleep
Shoeboots --- rifle --- whirring bullets ---shrieks

The aged undertrial in the next cell weeps
      and wants to go home
Liberate me   let me go   letme go home
On its egg in the throne the gallinule doses
asphyxiate in dark
fight back, c**k, die and fight, shout with the dumb

Glass splinters on tongue --- breast muscles quiver
Fishes open their gills and enfog water
A piece of finger wrapped in pink paper
With eyes covered someone wails in the jail-house
                      I can't make out if man or woman

Keep this eyelash on lefthand palm ---
                 and blow off with your breath
Fan out snake hood in mist
Cobra's abdomen shivers in the hiss of feminine urination
Deport to crematorium stuffing blood-oozing nose
                       in cottonwool
Shoes brickbats and torn pantaloons enlitter the streets

I smear my feet with the wave picked up from a stormy sea
That is the alphabet I drew on for letters.

(Translation of Murgir Roast) 1988