A Decrepit Map Poem by Pushpa Ratna Tuladhar

Callused skin on my body
Ruptured by the cruel nature
Like a deserted and dry riverbed
In a summer
Is the native soil, my Rolpa and Rukum
My mutilated soil
Maimed by landmines
This callus on my soil
Cannot be cut away by surgery
And then be tossed away,
Like lifeless hairs
Stuck on the porcelain sinkhole rim.

Ghostly lizard crawls
On the dusty mirror
Hanging in the dirty wall
Of a dilapidated room
Where only emptiness
Catapults the carnal beauty
Of the mute image
Hidden under the layers of dust
Reveal my wounded Rolpa and Rukum
Like a decrepit map
Ripped by too many folds
Scratched and perforated by the worms.

The awful pain has butterflies
In my eyes
Of sullen
And morose sky.

April 30,2004

(Rolpa and Rukum, the two remote districts
in Far Western Nepal, affected by the
Maoist’s People War)