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| Yuyutsu Sharma |
The recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma is a world--
renowned translator and poet.
The Supermarket
“Do
you sell any wines here,”
I asked and waited there for an eternity
as he struggled unpacking his box
of 99 cent merchandise in the aisle,
then rose to face me,
“I speak no Englis.”
I walked the superstore,
stench of the dead and the dying
stinging my nostrils...
A stone crab menacing moving
its smashed pincers atop
a pile of soft shelled turtles
frozen and defaced from
uncouth handling and numerous inspections--
Tilapia, carp and caby fish,
Dungeness crab and special lobsters,
jelly fish, yellow eel, the snake of the sea,
all live and squirming
in the murky waters of my brain...
The striped bass whose face
has been scrubbed along
endless tracks of transportations,
buffalo carp moving in
a murky glass case,
or live frogs in a tin box,
inert, not croaking to bring
Dionysus to these golden
Superstores in the Queens.
Great China crab frozen
beneath layers of an affluence,
conch shells hushed before the snail
could wriggle out of the shell
and name million cosmic metaphors
of self, salvation and sacrifice.
Or leave the empty body
of the Lord to utter a prayer
or a war cry of justice...
I guess it was a revolution
of sparrows as he lifted his step
to stop in the middle
of the jungle on his way out
of the castle Kapilvastu
and carefully step aside
so as not to crush
a line of Industrious ants
or stop a summer song
of ecstatic cicadas
along the raging rivers...
I haste I rushed out
of the slaughter house,
feeling the dragon’s hook
in my throat and bowed to
million little lives on the earth
singing and swaying in an erratic energy
to the music of His long
lustrous earlobes of wisdom...
©Yuyutsu Sharma
“Do you sell any wines here,”
I asked and waited there for an eternity
as he struggled unpacking his box
of 99 cent merchandise in the aisle,
then rose to face me,
“I speak no Englis.”
I walked the superstore,
stench of the dead and the dying
stinging my nostrils...
A stone crab menacing moving
its smashed pincers atop
a pile of soft shelled turtles
frozen and defaced from
uncouth handling and numerous inspections--
Tilapia, carp and caby fish,
Dungeness crab and special lobsters,
jelly fish, yellow eel, the snake of the sea,
all live and squirming
in the murky waters of my brain...
The striped bass whose face
has been scrubbed along
endless tracks of transportations,
buffalo carp moving in
a murky glass case,
or live frogs in a tin box,
inert, not croaking to bring
Dionysus to these golden
Superstores in the Queens.
Great China crab frozen
beneath layers of an affluence,
conch shells hushed before the snail
could wriggle out of the shell
and name million cosmic metaphors
of self, salvation and sacrifice.
Or leave the empty body
of the Lord to utter a prayer
or a war cry of justice...
I guess it was a revolution
of sparrows as he lifted his step
to stop in the middle
of the jungle on his way out
of the castle Kapilvastu
and carefully step aside
so as not to crush
a line of Industrious ants
or stop a summer song
of ecstatic cicadas
along the raging rivers...
I haste I rushed out
of the slaughter house,
feeling the dragon’s hook
in my throat and bowed to
million little lives on the earth
singing and swaying in an erratic energy
to the music of His long
lustrous earlobes of wisdom...
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