The river ran with her blood, not the dead sun’s, and the blood would never stop from her mashed womb.
art by Janusz Jurek
After the rape, the bamboos didn’t resume their moaning music. After the rape, the rapist walked to the river to wash his genitals.
The raped lay in the slush, flowers scattered around her, the sparrows silent in the bamboos. The sun slowly went down behind the gloomy hills, setting fire to her pubis and the river.
The rapist surely noted the silence of the dusk hooting once or twice to mimic a scream. The echoes stayed in the hills, the wind went dumb and the skies turned deaf as the silent river.
When the raped rose up and gathered her clothes and walked to the river to wash her wound, the chirps of a hundred sparrows suddenly filled the air and the creaking bamboos cried out with the roar of the wind.
The river ran with her blood, not the dead sun’s, and the blood would never stop from her mashed womb.
Later, as she limped home to an unlit hearth and a crying baby and a dying mother, the blood streamed along her thighs and wet her feet.
The rapist followed her lazily, biting into a fruit, his eyes set on the trail of blood till THE END.
Ra Sh (Ravi Shanker N) has published English-language poems in many national and international online and print magazines. His poems have been translated into German and French. He has published three collections of poetry – ‘Architecture of Flesh’ (two editions) by Poetrywala, Mumbai, ‘The Bullet Train and other loaded poems’ by Hawakal Prokashan, Kolkota and ‘Kintsugi by Hadni’ by RLFPA Editions, Kolkota.
His translations into English include a biography ‘Mother Forest’ (of C.K. Janu, Kerala tribal leader) (Women Unlimited), two collections of poems ‘Waking is another dream’ (Sri Lankan Tamil resistance poems) (Navayana) and ‘How to translate an earthworm’ (an anthology of 101 contemporary Malayalam poems translated to English)(Dhauli Books), a collection of essays ‘Kochiites’ ( by Bony Thomas on the migrant communities in Kochi)(Greenex) and two collections of short stories ‘ Harum Scarum Saar and other stories’( of Bama, Tamil Dalit writer)(Women Unlimited) and ‘Don’t want caste’ (stories by Malayalam Dalit writers)( Navayana.)
His two books (1) a collection of translated stories from Tamil – “Ichi Tree Monkey and other stories” by Speaking Tiger, Delhi and (2) a play “Blind men write” –to be published by Rubric Publications, Delhi, are in the pipeline.
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