Silver Arcs of Thought: A Meditative Reading of the Crescent Moon/Review by Dr. Jachindra Rout

(Reviewer: Dr. Jachindra Rout)

Dr. Alok Kumar Ray stands as a distinguished bilingual poet whose lyrical compositions in both Odia and English have earned him international acclaim. Rooted deeply in cultural ethos of Odisha , yet attuned to the refined cadence of British English , his verse bridges the local and the global with effortless grace. Ray’s poetry, elegant and evocative, often delves into the profound subtleties of emotion, nature and human existence, reflecting a sensibility that is both classically inspired and modern in thought. His mastery over language, coupled with a philosophical depth, renders his work, intellectually resonant and aesthetically rich. Writing in the tradition of lyrical elegance and introspective nuance, Ray exemplifies the art of poetic bilingualism- preserving the soul of his native tongue while embracing the expressive potential of English with finesse. His voice contributes significantly to the contemporary literary landscape, marking him as a poet of rare insight and enduring relevance. 

Kalijahna( Black Moon) is a luminous anthology that gathers seventy six Odia poems, including nine by the inimitable Dr. Alok Kumar Ray , alongside contributions from distinguished Odia voices and seven Hindi poets. The collection is further enriched by thirty English poems, thirteen of which are penned by Ray himself under various titles, each bearing his signature elegance and contemplative grace. This trilingual bouquet offers a rare confluence of regional depth and universal appeal. The poems traverse vast emotional and philosophical landscape from the intimate to the cosmic, from the ephemeral to the eternal. Ray’s work, in particular, stands out for its refined diction, Eliotian undertones and introspective cadence. His bilingual presence serves as a unifying force, a binding the diverse linguistic threads into a singular poetic vision. Kalijahna is more than an anthology; it is a literary constellation, where myriad voices reflect the shared moonlight of creative expression across cultures and tongues. 

First poem of the anthology is Akhira Sahare Kalijahna or in the City of Eyes, the beloved’s tender promise glimmers like moonlight upon restless waves. The lover overwhelmed by joy, trembles between disbelief and ecstasy. The poem waves an Oceanic echo- love’s vow reverberating through silence- capturing a moment where hope outshines doubt. 

In the hauntingly lyrical piece, Kalijahna arrives unseen under the riverbank, merging with the lover’s body and soul like a whispered enchantment. The wind, wild and whimsical, mimics the elusive beloved, playing a sensual game of hide and seek. The poet entranced , dreams her presence in the solitude of bed. 

The third poem , Kalijahniar Kaladhala Andhar reflects the style of the poet in Eliot’s pattern. In true Eliotic fashion , the poem unfolds as a meditation on memory and longing. The poet, upon reading his beloved’s letter , is drawn into a reverie-time, collapses , and the past reawakens. Wandering through once-shared spaces, every image is stepped in nostalgia, echoing love’s ghost in measured , the melancholic cadence. 

In the same anthology , a poem bearing the title Boki Jhia( Foolish Daughter) of Sunanda Das Mohapatra crafts a stark and stirring commentary on the social structures that encircle womanhood, particularly the vulnerable path a daughter must tread in a world often hostile to her being. The title , deceptively simple-Foolish Daughter betrays the gravity of its concerns: that innocence, if unguided , they become peril in a society so quick to blame the victim and so slow to nature understanding.

The poem is less a reproach and more a lament , disguised as instruction. With disciplined lyricism, it voices a father’s or society’s – stern counsel, shaped by centuries of fear, experience, and inherented caution. There is no room for whimsical rebellion, for each mister in attire, gesture, or movement might provoke unseen dangers- not due to the predatory vigilance of a society ever poised to trespass. 

Sunanda’s lines, though simple in their Odia idioms, resonate with the tension between love and fear. They echo a collective anxiety, urging the daughter to blend caution with grace, silence with discernment, to be ever- watchful, to ‘manage’ life rather than merely live it. The tone neither gentle nor cruel, strikes of chord of sorrowful realism-highlighting not only the burden of being a daughter but the cruel absurdity of having to wear restraint as a second skin. 

Yet the poem subtly critiques its own morality. Beneath the voice of instruction lies the shadows of regret, the poet’s quiet ache that such lessons must even exist. This poem thus operates as both a cultural document and a poetic lament. It is a mirror held to society that teaches its daughters to fear the night rather than teaching its sons not to become shadows. 

In a tradition reminiscent of British moral verse-yet darker, more intimate-Sunanda’s work captures the tragedy of constrained girlhood, rendered in plaintive, restrained lines that speak volumes. A poem that teaches, warns, weeps, and endures- Boki Jhia remains not just a poem about the daughter, but an elegy for all.

In Darpan O Mun, the poet renders a deeply introspective soliloquy, a modern Odia lament infused with the shadowed resonate of Eliotan despair and feminine resilience. It is a poem of absence of betrayed trust, and of an identity fractured by unjust suspicion. 

The speaker stands before the mirror not in vanity but in existential reckoning- Mo Rupare Mun Nai ( I find not myself in my own reflection)- echoing Eliot’s own “ I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” The mirror is not a surface but a portal to memory, a silent witness to the poet’s slow erosion under the weight of unjust love. Once cherished, now accused, she bears the burden not to sin, but of being misread, misjudged, and ultimately caste away. 

The beloved who once swore tenderness, now sees shadows where there is light. It is suspicion, irrational yet absolute- becomes the blade that severe, not just the bond, but her own sense of self. He thought me guilty, yet I was not- a line that encapsulates the injustice with a stark , tragic dignity. The poem moves through seasons of remembrances: moments once tender now recur like phantoms. She recalls the quiet laughter, the class of hands, breath the moonlight, the shared silence more eloquent than speech. These fragments, like Eliot’s fragment “ I have shored against my ruins, “ now lie scattered across the room of her memory, cold and gleaming each time. Confronts she, constraints it- She is concerned her absence: Darpanare . In front of mirror, she searches her woman she once was-untainted, innocent, whole- but finds only the cutline of someone weathered by betrayal. 

This is no mere a personal lament. The speaker elevates her sorrow to a metaphysical plane- the poem becoming a study of perception, judgement, and the female soul in exile. Her separation is not merely physical but metaphysical- her soul adrift, her image uncertain, her reflection estranged. This poem of Paramita is a lyrical elegy, a feminine wasteland where memory and mirror conspire to tell the truth, history denied. In exquisite restraint and lyrical austerity, the poem reclaims purity from the ashes of suspicion, and identify from the finest sense, modern poetry’s quiet triumph.

The Poem, Bou (Mother) by Bijan Ray, evokes deep nostalgia through tender recollections of a mother silent, tireless labour. The emotive language stirs sincere sentiment while the poet’s response reveals psychological depth. The past is not mere remembered but relived- each image a pulse of buried affection. Her simple acts- waking early, cooking, waiting at the door, shouldering as sorts of strain and pain, enduring as sufferings become sacred rituals in the poet’s memory, filled with unspoken love. The tone restrained yet poignant, reflects affective sincerity, a core tenet in I.A. Richard’s theory of poetic value. The reader, too, is drawn into this emotional resonance. 

In the poem Bandhupriti (Love for a Friend) of Saroj Dash, renowned bilingual poet, the fleeting encounter between the two estranged friends across a road becomes a moment charged with existential weight. Interpreted through Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist lens, the poem captures the anguish of freedom, choice, and the burden of memory. The two friends, once closed , now pass one another “ like shadows” , not out of malice, but from the quiet torment of past choices unspoken. Neither acknowledges the other- not due to forgetfulness, but because of recognition would summoning a reckoning they cannot endure. The poet presents this scene with aching simplicity, yet beneath it lays the complex Sartrean truth: we are condemned to be free, yet often retreat into “bad faith” to escape the responsibility of our past. The road between them becomes symbolic- a chasm of time, regret, a silence. Dash subtly unveils how memory imprisons, and how love, once unclaimed, becomes a quiet exile. 

In Premara Spandan ( The Vibration of Love) , Sunanda Mishra Panda , a noted bilingual poet , renders love as a divine, all-pervading force- a delicate, radiant, and transformative-much in the romantic spirit of P.B. Shelley. The poem glides through three luminous perceptions of love: the poet’s spiritual kinship with Earth and soil, the devoted and unspoken affection of a dedicated soul, and the eternal, unconditional embrace of a mother. Each form of love is ephemeral in presence yet eternal in essence, like “ dew drops that silently wet the heart.” – a metaphor echoing Shelley’s own ethereal imagery. Panda’s language is lyrical and airy, yet deeply rooted in emotional truth allowing the mundane to rise into the realm of sublime. Just as Shelley viewed love as a divine principle uniting man and nature so too does Mishra Panda weave an intricate tapestry of attachment, sacrifice, and tenderness, where love breathes quietly yet profoundly in every line. 

In the poem Hunger( Bhoka) Sumati Mund poignantly unveils the ceaseless craving that afflicts mankind- both bodily and existential. Her verse , austere hunting, captures the universality of want, rendering hunger as an eternal human condition. With stark imagery and unembellished diction, she indicts a world where fulfilment is elusive, and man , insatiably yearning, remains perpetually immersed in soul and stomach alike.

According to T.S. Eliot poetry is the union of thought and feelings, calling for a fusion of intellect and emotion in poetry. The poem of Mrs. Mund binds the universal thought with her personal feelings. Greatest critics of English literature opine that poetry should be harmonious fusion of emotion and intellect, expressed with precision, economy, and depth, it must evoke feelings, provoke thought, and reveal truth through rich imagery, rhythm and form, what the poet Mund acquired. Actually great poetry distils experience into language that resonates with the universe, enduring beyond the time.

The poem of Vijay Moharana , Jahnaku Chanhile( If I look at the Moon) crafts Keatsian dreamscape , where love and longing intertwine in Moonlight.The poet beholds the Moon not merely nature’s lamp, but as the mirror of his beloved’s soul. Her voice calls him through the lunar glow , and every glance at the night sky becomes a dialogue of hearts much like Keats’ “ Bright Star” , the Moon in this poem is a constant presence, evoking eternal love pain wrapped in beauty .The ache of separation transforms into a pleasure –pain , echoing the Romantic belief in sweet sorrow.

The beloved becomes omnipresent , in silence, in shadows, in the curve of the Moon’s smile. Moharana’s diction is gentle , sensuous, and musical, evoking a soft melancholy. The poem is a delicate ode to love eternal where celestial longing meets earthly devotion, and the Moon becomes the shrine of a lover’s soul.

Bijan Ray’s Ornament is a lyrical meditation stepped in visual and sensory imagery, evoking the early hours of an autumnal morning. The poem opens with a striking metaphor- “ On the wall of the sky hanged who well decorated paining”-a bold personification that casts the sky as a canvas for divine artistry. This metaphor, though imaginative, suffers slightly from syntactical awkwardness , the phrasing could benefit from refinement to enhance clarity without diminishing poetic effect. The imagery of “ Slight cool wind”, veil of darkened night and ‘ reddish smile of the goldmohar successfully captures the delicate transition from night to dawn . The use of natural elements – particularly the blooming goldmohar and the fragrance of sandalwood-evokes a Wordsworthian sensibility, though the poem gestures toward a modernist abstraction also to Eliot in its layered symbolic suggestiveness. 

However, the poem remains more impressionistic than introspective-while the sensory appeal is rich, the emotional and philosophical underpinning feels underdeveloped. There is beauty in description , but it risks becoming static without a stronger internal movement of reflective depth. The ornamentation of language , though elegant, at times borders on the decorative, lacking the tension or contradiction that might propel the poem into more profound terrain. After all , this poem is a poem of aesthetic grace and sensual delicacy., yet its strength lies more in visual composition than in emotional or philosophical complexity. Ray’s craft would benefit from more structural clarity and thematic anchoring to fully transform imagine into insight. 

In Mustard Field’s Flame Mishra evokes the soul of rural passion and pastoral intimacy, transfiguring the beloved into a symbol of both sensual fire and ethereal grace. His imagery flows like Shelly’s West Wind – swift, tender , transformative. The “ Lip and Flame Tree” burns with both love and nature’s lush defiance. The poem’s world is not merely seen –it is breathed, worshipped, and almost dreamt into being “ Your feet and butterfly enigmatic letter of quieted night”. There is a yearning here. “ You are there I am here” reminiscent of Epipsychision, where distance becomes divine ache. And like Shelley’s eternal return, the “ Seventh Season” hides premise in a “ Secret nest”- a mystic haven of rebirth and reunion. 

The poem Last Page of Paramita Sadanghi is deeply introspective and a imaginative poem that captures the quiet unravelling of a relationship through metaphors of abandonment, stagnation, and unresolved longing. The title itself suggests a closure- but one that feels incomplete like a book stopped mid-thought. The poem opens with striking lines . Among the moments that you have deserted like changing clothes on the bed of relationship. Here emotional detachment is likened to something mundane habitual, showing how intimacy becomes routine, even disposable .

This metaphor sets the tone. For the rest of the poem – where love is no longer an active presence but a memory one dresses in occasionally like an old costume. The closing lines are philosophically rich. “ Because all know that only hard questions are served here to arrive at solution unknown."

This is the poem philosophical ,core an acknowledgement that in love and life , resolution is rarely achieved .It is the questioning that defines our existence., not the answer. Overall the Last Page is quietly powerful modernist meditation on emotional detachment , time ,and the unfinished nature of human relationships . Sadangi’s language is suggestive rather than explanatory, mocking the reader inhabit the silence between words. It is a poem that doesn’t declare – but reveals with restraint and poignant ambiguity. 

The last poem of the anthology Kalijahna is the poem of Bijoylaxmi Dash , Nausea Melancholy, is a haunting emotionally raw portrayal of inner collapse- a soul caught in the dimming twilight of existence. The title itself sets the tone: “ nausea “ evokes existential sickness, while “ melancholy” roots the emotion is quiet despair. Together they form a portrait of psychological erosion reminiscent of modern existential literature. The poem ‘s structure is disjoined and unpunctuated, mirroring the subject’s mental fragmentation. There is a complete alienation from self. Dash’s depiction of despair is stark and unrelenting “ Black clouds of despair evolves"- No attachment of life. These lines elevate the poem from mere lament to social critique- The poet calls not for pity, but for humane understanding- for an act of seeing someone in pain without judgement. 

In its form, tone , and theme, "Nausea Melancholy” aligns with modernist and existential traditions- echoes of Sylvia Plath and Jean Paul Sartre surface psychological clarity and spiritual exhaustion. It is a poem of shadowed depth- offering neither resolution nor redemption, but an honest stare into the abyss of a fading inner world. 

In the Crescent Moon – each poem becomes a sliver of human fragility , lit dimly against the sky of inner darkness. From Paramita Sadangi’s fractured temporality in the Last Page of Bijoylaxmi Dash’s psychological dissolution in Nausea Melancholy and sensual pastoral longing of Pinaki Mishra’s Mustard Field’s Flame, the anthology maps a terrain of solitude , yearning and existential twilight . 

Every and each poet of the anthology doesn’t merely write emotion- they inhabit it. The language often leans towards elliptical modernist cadences, yet grounded in deeply personal metaphors. Each poem is a pedestal where vulnerability stands exposed- not for pity, but for understanding.  

Like Crescent Moon itself , this anthology is not about fullness, but what remains unsaid in the thin, aching curve of light-Kalijahna is not a loud chorus- it is a nocturne of whispers , an elegy of fading things. And in that quite space, it reveals the most luminous truth: that even fractured light can hold a whole sky of meaning. 

□ Dr. Jachindra Rout

At- Gobandia, P.O. – Palai,

P.S. – Balichandrapur, 

Jajpur-754205, Odisha, Bharat. 

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