बेन ओक्रिची ही कविता मुळात आफ्रिकेसंबधातली आहे पण ती आपल्या देशाला उद्देशून लिहील्यासारखी
वाटते.

We Have No Other Way

We have no other way
Through the blistering
Air of our lives.
The miasma is ours.

The night denies our participation
Sunlight breaks on our anguish.
How many smothered faces
does it take to establish
Our disquiet?
How many fractured limbs
Will it take
To rebuild in the quietude
Of waiting?

A domain descends
And scalds ash from
Our brains.
We stalk on the crater's precipice
Arguing subtleties
Beneath the brows
Of pitiless gods.

- 2 -

We have no other way
But to chart
Beneath the skin's anointed pain
And above the flames
Of the head.

We have no choice but to live
More intensely
While the armies gather
And the earth widens for our fears.

- 3 -

May the wisdom of the roots prevail
That we may see the eyes
Of monsters bloat at our terror.
They might blast their strange detonators
But we shall reply
With salted love in our wounds
With geometry
And religion in our violence.
We shall breach the walls
breathe cracks on the mirrors
and dare the white* cock
with its feathers.
We shall be there
When our lives begin.

- 4 -

Our limbs imitate flight.
We shall metamorphose our loss
Widen the angles
And increase the height
And depth
Of the body's tameless spirit.

Plagues that growl our secret names
Leave us staggering
With inhuman love.
Transformations that occur
Within the mind's heaving
Recess
Bequeath us
The shores of human desires
And the dreams of a compassionate god.

- 5 -

The lights of secret volcanoes call us
Blending fires and water temper us
The night dares us
Sunlight charges us:
We must breath anew
And anoint the spirit
in coolest
burning
dew.

-Ben Okri [1983]

* आपल्या संदर्भात कदाचित white cock ऐवजी saffron cock म्हणायचं का?
-बापू करन्दिकर.