2 September is left-progressive Bengali poet Biren Chattopadhyay’s birthday. Last year this day marked the end of his birth centenary […]
Author: admin
Bridge
I and my sister
were taught to walk on a
bridge
between prayer rugs scraping knees
and my nani’s hand circling incense sticks
bridge…
Two Poems
In his suitcase
Ittar bottles catch their eye:
‘No Alcohol.’
They sniff
The exotic fragrances
And stare
Into the traveler’s eyes…
Three Poems
The sky mourns at the roof of my mouth.
I want you
but the sea more.
Stained lens of our ancient camera, look!
Shadows dissolve in the
walls of incongruent grief,
none captured…
Three Poems
Bhumi sent me many things
Toffee, slate pencil, kittens
So I wired some money
To her core
Which didn’t reach,
But a tumbler of steel, bobbed
Up and down
From primordial well
Into that abyss of metal…
We’ll Have to End It Here
Swallowing opium balls two times in a day
time passes by as I’m high and asleep
A street dog comes sleeps beside me
A cockroach comes and licks my cheek…
Two Poems
It’s the taste of an aftermath. The tang of lime soaked in ashes. A flavour that’s unrealized, an overdose of hot afternoon, grief with hands of a gravedigger, gumboots in a coal mine, cigarettes’ butt, an infant ‘s shrill whine, the silence of a fluttering butterfly, the abandonment of love but not hope…
Three Poems
I pluck sadness out of me
and plant it into the earth of His heart.
I don’t wish to find it hovering above
in the eagle circling in the thermals
or the sun’s mystifying halo…
Two Poems
What else? Ghee, puffed wheat,
semolina, cigarettes, 200 cartridges,
spare hookah pipes, rifle-cleaning cloth,
malted Horlicks, Tiffin tins
a little stained by blood and mud. What else…