Atonement Poem by Puspanjali Sahu

With layers and layers of darkness
You and only you can shine like a bright star
How is it possible?

Last day
When I discovered you
over a heap of dead bodies
clasping rotten flesh in crooked hands
Between you and a lump of selfishness
I searched and searched
to find little difference

My heart started sinking in the sea
of sorrow

Oh dear crow
Cannot you be little different
from the sin-soaked world?

I looked back
with a grief-stricken heart
But
just at that moment
you crossed my grief
and perch high in the tree

With a strong shake
of your skinny neck
I felt
all your sins
scattered somewhere into the universe
And the bright blue sky
welcomed you
with its most tight hug
filled with divine love

Why cannot I be like you?
Why cannot I leave my past
and perch high
into the sky

One day,
driven by the deadly hunger
my heart lost before me
With sordid soul
my throat touched
a… just-dead body
Blood of which…
still has marks
somewhere in my
nerves of sanity

And tells me each day…..each moment
For sins full of selfishness
there is no atonement