(This poem was written two days after the execution of Operation Absolute Resolve by the United States military on January 3-5, 2026)
“As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now” (‘A Song on the End of the World,’ Czeslaw Milosz)
On the day, the world begins
A bee circles a sugar bowl,
A dentist mends teeth in a dainty parlor,
Indifferent balconies look upon the street,
By a celibate God’s temple, young wives are flocking,
And a tea-seller turns the stove on heat.
On the day the world begins
Clay teacups are barricaded inside a tent—
Ochre on ochre, like a regiment;
A spider sleeps in its spliced gossamer,
The temple gong launches a January morning,
And thrice the teamaker splashes steaming teadrops;
Baptizing hungry coals under the awning.
And those who come to this wintry tea stall.
Find a ribbed bench, where a philosopher recalls,
Faraway Venezuela’s greasy quarries,
As slippery as foreign coins and memories.
A man in thirties reads, “President abducted by Trump” —
Cracking the sentence like toasted bread;
“He will finally win the Nobel for Oil”—
And a yellow dog barks earnestly at a mass of red thread.
Broken saucers skewer continents
In a smeared headline; God, man, and canine;
And rumours glued to the kettle’s bead—that no one believes;
Only a tonsured priest, who would be a civil servant—
Yet is not a civil servant, for he’s much too busy—
Sits fasting as he reads:
There will be no other beginning of the world,
There will be … no other beginning of the world.
Jamshedpur, January 6, 1944
Arup K. Chatterjee 