The Dark Valley of Fear
Mine-weary faces navigate a valley where bullets and planned burials define survival.
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From ULR
Issue 9 – Violence
VOICES
April night's faint voices recall a lost mother, igniting a soul's profound longing for immortality
June 15, 2023
I listen to a distant voice
through the April night,
indistinct, like
other night-sounds.
Something tells me
It’ss the voice of the dead,
now awakened
to a new life.
I remember my widowed mother
who brought up her children
and made them men.
She left a long time ago
for a land where there are
no farewells.
The dead have their own voices;
I can hardly comprehend their themes,
their unusual eagerness to make
their voices heard by us.
I dream of immortality, how
some of us long to be
a part of it, how the disembodied
work out death’s meanings.
📖
PART OF A COLLECTIONThe Dark Valley of Fear and 2 other poems
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Bibhu Padhi
Bibhu Padhi has published fourteen books of poetry. His poems have appeared in major magazines throughout the world, such as Contemporary Review, The New Humanist, The London Magazine, The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Times Literary Supplement, Wasafiri, Poetry Ireland Review, The American Scholar, Commonweal, The New Criterion, Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine, Rosebud, Prairie Schooner, Reed Magazine, Southwest Review, TriQuarterly, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Queen’s Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, New Contrast, Text, Takahe, Chandrabhaga, Debonair, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Indian Literature and Kavya Bharati,. They have been included in numerous anthologies and high-school/university textbooks. Seven of the most recent of these are The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, Language for a New Century: An Anthology of Poems (New York: Norton), Journeys (London: HarperCollins), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (New Delhi: HarperCollins), Distant Drums (Hyderabad & Mumbai: Orient Black Swan), Converse: Contemporary Indian Poetry in English (London: Pippa Rann Books), and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets. He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar.