Ah!
The lure of the marine floor
For its churning jig
Bristled with the blackest bane
For the ill-fated state
Was providence deaf
To the ear-splitting roar
Of the killer winds?
No alibi please
Impotent omnipotent
For your absence
Claiming yourself to be omnipresent
Unless
You had turned a culprit
Trying
To prove your alibi
Debasing your glory
When a devastating gale
Was
Making land fall
At Paradip port.
Pardon me my outburst
Revered Almighty.
Man's inhumanity to the elements
Cuts across
The barriers
Of the guilty and the innocent
Who fall a prey
To their deadly dudgeon
Of penal power.
Every aspect of the storm
In element grim
Played its game of glee
Spelling doom
Having earned the lethal
Grade five
Roarer blast
As a self gratulating
Fiend of speed
In
A tempestuous play of death
No whistle was blown
For its close
For the space of more than
An entire day.
Hamlets, homes and humans
And birds and beasts
That vanished
Are happily deaf
To the stranded souls'
Agonised wails
In that desolation of death
That once was Orissa.