Evening
by Bibhu Padhi (June 2014)
It is the cow-dust hour
and there is the smell
of bird-wings in the trees.
Darkness lowers
on the valley of Dhenkanal
like an angel coming down
to an unfamiliar earth.
The body seeks an earlier
noontime, when everything seemed
amazingly long, including time.
The earth looks away
from us, towards the night
and leaves to us
a new loneliness.
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eighth book of poems, Magic Ritual, was published earlier this year. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, the most recent being THE HARPERCOLLINS BOOK OF ENGLISH POETRY (2012). He lives in Bhubaneswar, India.
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