After Kafka’s The Trial
Tell me the last line, she says and turns the page. A page turn, a page blank, memories and scars dot you as spearmint leaves. To stand against the gelid stone wall waiting for…Oh, run, run, run, there’s still time, the hands are not yet on your throat. The renegade evening is dappled so gold. Yet when the moon comes, at such a time, the last line, she says, tell me the last line, will you, and turns the page.
A free page, a flight of hundred leagues, just you for you, strings smiling across what your life holds as jarred. How you wish to be there again, yet faces bubble up with eye holes, moonlight pours in as in novels, and your bare body’s leaning against the cold stone wall, forever. Does fear alone pervade you? Thick on the ground, the renegade evening, will last longer than your everything unsaid. And at such a time to see the moon shimmering on a brumal blade – a brief whisper cleaves the wind, not there, not there, no treasure of life, blood has stopped in the heart – the fish knife to slit open a voice, yet no voice, just rustling pages, blank pages, false pages, pages, pages, pages, tell me the last line, she says, like a dog, like a dog, I say and I say again and then turn the page.
Debasis Mukhopadhyay grew up in Calcutta, India, and now lives in Montreal, Canada. He has a PhD in literary studies from Université Laval and extensive experience in language teaching and translation. He writes poetry in both Bengali & English. His debut collection of poetry in Bengali was published in 2005. Debasis’s recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Snapping Twig, Silver Birch Press, Of/with, and elsewhere.
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