Corporeal

[Entre la peur et le confort]

There was no moon. No ocean nearby.

Somewhere there was, albeit

A persistence for a sudden tide.

There was no cloud. No tempest.

Nobody was playing a flute that night.

The two bodies were looking for nothing

Other than the bodies.

There was no word. Nothing was promised-

Neither any of them  was expected.  

The moment when we were sensuous touching each other

There was no sense of hesitation, doubt or fear.

There was an orange tunnel.

There was a path for the sun to come down all of a sudden.

You were murmuring a lullaby

We didn't have a country that day... 

Death of Kankhowa

                       [Thi khabar garam ki ghalib ke udenge purje

                        Dekhne toh hum bhi gaye the magar tamasha na hua]

Kankhowa died, a word spread over the village.

Immediately I prayed to the unseen one.

I came out for the funeral.

I took some incense sticks and fragrant flowers with me.

All the relatives came.

Jati banh, the bamboos were being cut.

Lament was there all over the courtyard.

Everybody came. No one was left to came.

Since everyone came to the funeral;

buying a white cloth Kankhowa came as well.

Pain in My Ribs

*

I caught a little accident a few days ago, there is pain in my ribs now.

Can't take a turn on bed.

The best part is- no spring bird is singing in the nights

from the tree of monkey jack fruit in my garden.

No Oinitom is being echoed at distance...

*

What a strange relation it was, between your fingers and my ribs.

Your Fingers used to grow like the fern on the Naga-hillside,

- used to wave with the breeze.

*

I wonder if the vultures would eat up my ribs

or just plucking the meat they'd leave them on the ground.

Would you ever come to Falfali Bakori by any chance?

The wish was, you would caress my ribs with your beautiful fingers...

looking for my ribs would you join the Bedouins some day?

*

Within the cage of my ribs there is another sun.

That sun, too, is stuck in his cyclical task of rising and setting, without fail.   

May be another disposable Sun, but, recycled...  

*

A pain grows in my ribs. I nurture it like an expecting mother.

Till the date the pain is there in my ribs, it will keep reminding me of your fingers.

The fingers I chopped off long ago just like the fern on the hillside...  

The Princess of Termites

There was a library in my heart. She came and told, she had done diploma in Library science. She was beautiful like a princess. The door of my old library always remained ajar. She entered and started sorting some of the racks. It was good to keep someone on a trial period. It was an age old library, disarranged and full of spider webs. She started cleaning the dusts, listing the racks, cataloging the books. She was seemingly restless and energetic; as I could guess, she was in search of some particular book... may be a book that lost its cover page long ago. A book that might have no page numbers or index pages. Whatever, I was not sure about. I was happy since the library only used to collecting books without any systematic method or discipline. I never could ever throw out the old or unimportant books. I was very bad at taxonomy - what was less important for me, since everything carried its own smell and presence. As my library was unattended by me for long it was full of chaos. Within the chaos one day she got lost. One day I knocked her, got no response. The door was stuck. What happened? She was supposed to clean it up! I opened the door somehow and saw, all were turned into soil. I realized, it was too late, she was a princess of the termites.   

Spring in Delhi (Sonnet 54)

Na kisi ki aankh ka noor hoon, na kisi ke dil ka karaar hoon

Jo kisi ke kaam na aa sake, main woh muste gubaar hoon...

-          Bahadur Shah Zafar

With a conspiracy  of putting fire to the sky with no fear of consequence, 

the Gulmohar trees are blooming at the every square.

And (as the price of gold is falling), Amaltas’s everywhere- 

Having an auction of golden beads, brightening the sky’s extreme range.

Like the smart girls going for tuition, who speak English very frequent,

dazzling the Bougainvillea.  The fragrant prayer

of the evening, from the Madhumalati I do hear.

One or two of the Karabi flowers drop in void. A silent condolence.

Up to the limit of my sights the spring has established its free-of-cost  bazaar.

It’s a blooming Delhi. Even lying on its anesthesia-bed Yamuna seeks no pardon.  

Roaming across the city Kankhowa comes to his Balcony, when work is over.

Not a single flower is there; nor a tender leaf. All hopes are lying prone. 

Just a fist -full of dried soil out there in the tubs. ‘Muste Gubaar’.

You didn’t take care when there was time, now no help in crying alone.

You didn’t take care on time, Kankhowa,  now no help in crying alone.

flowers in Delhi

What amount of toothpaste should I take (Sonnet 53)

What amount of toothpaste should I take

on the brush I do not know till today. In winter

Exactly when instead of the light chadar

should I pull out the warm blanket?

Picking up the ringing telephone from the rack

how loud to say ‘Hello’? What time I do require

 to boil an egg? What amount of water

should I pour to each tub of plants?

Many such little things I required to know anyway,

I do not know. How to maintain a diary? Although  

I owned the habit of writing a poetry every day.

what costs a good pen to write well I do not know.

I do not know how many times in a single day

should I tell you in words how much do I love you. 

Nothing new for today (Sonnet 52)

If you come today, there is nothing new to talk about. Anyway

you please come. We’ll sit together despite the fact that...

something very mundane and little things we’ll talk.

Per se, even today people die in hunger. Like that only.

the children are taught how to draw a map Even today,

-          what is a border, what is the definition of a nation-state.

How people rush on the steps pushing others stabbing to death

only to pray a God of stone. Haven’t you seen it already?

I’m not thinking of doing anything at this moment. Moments are Lumpen.  

Today we’ll just talk. Talk and talk. There’s nothing to pay.   

In the Hunger-stricken nights also people spread their hands often

if you cannot offer grains why not a quantum of compassion: they say.

We’ll talk about all the old matters, much spoken, even rotten...

Talk about hunger. Talk about love. There is nothing new for today.

Disposable Sun 7 (sonnet 57)

                For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a

                god kissing carrion…

                                                [HAMLET, Act 2, Scene ii

Why the hell of such an intense anger, albeit, 

Oh! Sun, Crazy Sun. well then, take away everything,

put fire to all. Burn out; burn out all, all to the extinct!

If only that is how it all makes you satisfied.

The hope for clouds, oh Chatak, is futile and morbid.

In your land the clouds are roaming,

Kankhowa, it is just you at a foreign land. Chanting

Around for false. Cursed is Your Fakiri outfit.

If a single living being survives on earth, it will repeat the million years’ record.

Thirsty Guru Dutt sings, put fire to the world. At distant corner, a ballad with a false note.

Shrugging off the burning Sun, bathing in sweats, men and women are on the way to work.

Also I can see a little bird with a stick on his beak, beside a dead dog with maggot...

What if, may be, or, otherwise, even, though – and with many more conjunctions

A tree holds a seed. Thus happen to my poetry that only grows under the sunny havoc… 

Suranjan Basu, 'Respite', Etching

Current Address (sonnet 56)

One day I went looking for myself. Quite

A long search it took to find a place where

I thought I would find myself for sure.

But it didn’t happen, oops, disgrace was in its height.

A leaf fallen near to the place gave me a sight.

It heard me saying oops, and said, “You were

Here, Kankhowa, believe me just right here.

Your assumption isn’t wrong, but absolutely right.

Just a little ago you left.” I went to the address; without further ado,

 That the leaf gave to me, and realized, there also it wasn’t me. What a disguise!!

When returned, the leaf was no more at the same place I left. A downfall of my ego…

What to do, yellowed leaf did hardly any promise, well, let it go, it’s been a slice.

I back to home, saw, the house was no more the same I left awhile ago.

Perhaps that is why Buddha also never stepped into the same river twice. 

Ramkinkar Baij, Sujata 

A portrait in dark (Sonnet 55)

Do you remember the last act of looking up at the sky  

For the trembling polka dots? Remember your last inhale of the azure?

Or do you remember the last time you made a tide with a tiny gulp of air?

When did you blow a bunch of cotton to make a white cloud for the sky?

When did you wept for the last time in front of the empty wall without knowing why?

Sleep? That’s a false dispute. Why weighty your eyelids are,

do you know the exact reason? From where did the Gulmohar

collect the color red, when did you ask it, when did you made a last cry?

You yourself cannot excavate the most secretive words anymore

you preserved for someone. What would you offer, even if he comes knocking

at your door, with a miracle? Hearing a distant echo from a remote corner

you wanted to sing a song once, where has lost the gong, why cannot you sing?

Time is no watch. Aging is not passing years. Life is not a calendar.

From when did you stop counting on the tip of fingers the days of waiting?  

Ramkinkar Baij, Portrait