Oh house of Gods! Oh house of Gods!
Temples or Mosques
Churches or Synagogues
Displaced they stand—
A black stone
Rectangle or phallic
Does it matter?
In streams refugees pour out
Bloodshed, Gore
Hatred and More
More and More
Ring- a- round the roses
Pocketful of doses
You think when they Burnt,
Singed, they would have learnt
Flames should be doused
Not aroused
Ram and Rahim
Merciful Guanyin
Images that flit
And then fade
Blinded, Justice opens its gate —
Anger followed by hate
Will there be violence?
Will there be clash?
Ram and Rahim?
Did they just decree that?
Ram Rahim Guanyin
Rahim Ram Guanyin
Corpses float in a river of bloody angst— is it Ram or Rahim?
Om shantih! Om shantih! Om shantih!
Mitali Chakravarty’s poetry has been published online and as part of two anthologies, In Reverie (2016) and An Anthology of Indian Poetry in English (1984). She has published a humorous book of essays on living in China where she spent eight years, In the Land of Dragons (2014); translated a short story, ‘Full Circle’, by the erstwhile Nabendu Ghosh, a Bengali writer and Bollywood scriptwriter, which was published in a collection called That Bird Called Happiness (2018). She had numerous bylines in The Times of India, The Hindustan Times and The Statesman in the 1980s up to 1992 and more recently online on Kitaab.org, Countercurrent, Modern Literature and The Daily Star (Bangladesh). This April, she joined kitaab.org as the editor. She blogs at 432m.wordpress.com.
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