Calcutta if you must exile me wound my lips before I go

Calcutta if you must exile me wound my lips before I go

only words remain and the gentle touch of your finger on my lips Calcutta
burn my eyes before I go into the night

the headless corpse in a Dhakuria bylane the battered youth his brains blown
out and the silent vigil that takes you to Pataldanga Lane where they
will gun you down without vengeance or hate

Calcutta if you must exile me burn my eyes before I go

they will pull you down from the Ochterlony monument and torture each broken
rib beneath your upthrust breasts they will tear the anguish from
your sullen eyes and thrust the bayonet between your thighs

Calcutta they will tear you apart Jarasandha-like
they will tie your hands on either side and hang you from a wordless cross
and when your silence protests they will execute all the words that
you met and synchronised Calcutta they will burn you at the stake

Calcutta flex the vengeance in your thighs and burn silently in the despair
of flesh
if you feel like suicide take a rickshaw to Sonagachhi and share the sullen
pride in the eyes of women who have wilfully died

wait for me outside the Ujjala theatre and I will bring you the blood of that
armless leper who went mad before hunger and death met in his wounds

I will show you the fatigue of that woman who died near Chitpur out of sheer
boredom and the cages of Burrabazar where passion hides in the
wrinkles of virgins who have aged waiting for a sexless war that
never came
only obscene lust remains in their eyes after time has wintered their
exacting thighs and I will show you the hawker who died with Calcutta
in his eyes
Calcutta if you must exile me destroy my sanity before I go