Reclined against the despondent doorframe Of your tumbledown shack In a blind alley in gathering darkness Cleopatra Calcutta! Do you dream of the days of your glories When your exotic lover from beyond the seas Salvaged you from the premature pyre On the bank of the sacred river And built a palace to please you And to commemorate his conquest? How your virile lover Kept away the vulgar rabble Who in impotent infatuation Cast their covetous eyes From their shabby thresholds?
Your lover is gone Gone are your glories and glamour too. Your lips are not luscious And your heavy hips are no more wavy Your eyes have lost their lure and lustre Yet eternal enchantress that you are You still retain your strong toil of grace And finding no barricade The crowds come scampering And throng in their thousands in a maddening din To defile and despoil your disintegrating body Forgetting you are past your prime And you have a soul. Those emasculate upstarts, randy as they are And thoroughly lacking in grace, Mercilessly scratch your scarred wrinkled face With their wanton and lustful nails Till you are in a shambles and a puddle of their piss. Most of your bastard sons Making their ugly walls uglier for others’ liberation Huddle up in a corner of cosmopolitan cowardice While their own home is under a relentless siege; And the rest, a bunch of shameless pimps, Callously collect a paltry pittance From the drunken rapists in a carnal exchange And embalmed by the scum of this brawling brothel All of them seem to enjoy a supreme bliss In an infernal euphoria O Calcutta! O Cleopatra!
