Belshazzar's Feast In the Dutch room amid Rembrandt’s paintings, I sit sharing my reflections with myself – my woollen jacket no comparison with Belshazzar’s mantle of ermine studded with jewels, his silk turban, white and resplendent, crowning his distracted gaze. The room acquires the aura of a court in session, members of the jury appear unmoved, floating like creatures treading on the moon. The wooden bench, the murmuring crowd, the parched sensation in my throat, deeper rumblings in my stomach, tired eyes and cold feet, a bone-marrow fatigue alienates me from the artistic feast. The haloed hand, the writing on the wall, offer unexpected food for thought. Mene Mene Tekal Upharsin: You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting! Belshazzar’s face aghast with such a revelation. Do not despair, one was saved; do not presume, one was damned. I close my eyes thinking of God mercifully adjusting the divine scales in my favour – myself poised on one side, insubstantial; my burden of sins on the other, weighing down heavy, leaving me quite unbalanced. So God kept adding extra weights of suffering to help me overcome my unbearable lightness of being like an ingenious doctor shrewdly intent on restoring me to life by increasing daily the bitter pills of my life in self-exile. I had a vision of grace reconciling me to myself, to see me poised and not wanting. You may have mistaken my strength, dear God to emerge from your gift of suffering balanced.
Shanta Acharya’s latest poetry collections are What Survives Is The Singing (2020), Imagine: New and Selected Poems (2017), Dreams That Spell The Light (2010). Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published in 2001 and her novel, A World Elsewhere, in 2015. www.shanta-acharya.com
Amethyst Review 
I find this poem very interesting, particularly in its contrasts. The ‘haloed hand’ stanza is almost like a fulcrum weighing the balance between rich and poor, feasting and starving, Belshazzar and the speaker. I wondered at the lines ‘my life in self exile’ and ‘grace reconciling me to myself’ perhaps separating the good self from the bad self (is it ever that clear)? but the end is so human, so vulnerable and so easy to identify with that the poem leaves the reader thoughtful, and I love poems like that. Thank you Sarah! (And of course Shanta Acharya, who I investigated immediately because she is new to me.) I really love The Amethyst Review and look forward to it every day. – Jane
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