MOHIT MITRA Poet Lyric

The Fifth Evangel

—A Gospel Song—

Before the cock had gathered up the dawn,
The widow knelt where lichened thresholds shone;
She drew cold water till the stars were gone,
And wrung the cloth against the parish stone.
No eye observed. The basin, emptied there,
Held still the shape of what was never there.

The smith unclasped the darkness from the ore;
His hammer found the pulse beneath the scale.
The anvil answered once—and never more
In quite the tongue remembered by the vale.
His daughter laughed. The sparks forgot to fall,
And daylight lingered, listening to them all.

A seamstress loosed one thread beside the pane;
The garment yielded, yet no seam gave way.
A rook flew home through frost without a stain,
As though the wind had folded into clay.
She trimmed the end. The silence left no sign,
Yet every sleeve retained another line.

The shepherd freed a bramble from the fleece;
He neither praised the lamb nor blamed the thorn.
He waited till their separate motions ceased,
Then walked as one who need not summon morn.
The dew climbed slowly upward through the grass,
As though the earth let gentler kingdoms pass.

The baker pressed his thumb into the dough,
And watched the hollow vanish of itself.
The oven breathed. The flour began to grow
Towards no hand upon its wooden shelf.
He broke one loaf before the hour was due.
Its fragrance entered everything but view.

The river carried nettles, bark, and rain;
It neither kept nor measured what it bore.
The children launched bare branches down the plain.
None reached the bend. None drifted as before.
The current turned where no wind crossed above.
The reeds leaned inward with forgotten love.

Toward evening, where the lane grew thin with dust,
A little girl broke one coarse heel of bread
And shared it with a traveller whose trust
Seemed older than the road on which they fed.

The crumb did not descend.

It entered first
The shadow underneath the swallow's wing.

Smoke came home before the fire.

The wells remembered thirst.

The orchard ripened inward.

Every bell
Became the space from which its ringing fell.

The widow found the water still unspilled.

One spark remained before the smith could strike.

The severed thread grew morning where it filled

No cloth that any hand had learned to like.

The shepherd breathed.

The sheep looked up.

Then passed

A silence through the field.

The footprints filled with grass.

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