sarbajit

If you won’t listen,
I’ll still speak,

Speak for the downtrodden.

Live for the world of utopia

Correct the vision of myopia.

And then I’ll wield my pen,

Not only in my solitary pain.

Not so much when I’m hurt,

But, when my “sensibility is hurt.”

There are drier cheeks that need our tear

There are possibilities that need our care.

There are stories that need our ear,

And a tired calf that needs a deer.

Answer

I have searched in love and vain,

I have asked the gossiping rain,

They returned me poem and song

That is not the answer I long.

Only a poem answers a poem,

A letter may answer another,

Like remembrance and coy glance,

Like rhythm and rhyme,

Only meeting answers requesting,

And abstinence answers absence.

But, echo doesn’t answer voice,

And love doesn’t answer choice

I am all in search of something reassuring rather,

That is the difference between statement and answer.

Unloved

Before Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden,

I was, though my story will remain secretly hidden.

A rude rush of the guardian wind took me away from my stem

But not a tear dropped; nay it was the morning’s dew on her hem.

I was the flower, who cried when his tenderness was crushed on the stone

The messenger bee did not greet me or kiss me to wake up, neither the drone.

The stories of the kings lost in deserts in search for oasis are well known,

But not my tales, nor my dreams, they are just forgotten or mercilessly thrown.

A mad passion and the stone hearted rocks, cruelly once separated me

From the clear stream, that continued selfishly on its way to the sea.

I am the lonely feeble tributary, lost in the deluge of deserted sand dunes

The rumble of the free waves has succumbed to life’s driest tunes.

The great poetries written in silvery tears are cared for,

But not me, nor am I praised, neither sought nor adored

A moment of haste, a sudden snatch tore me off from the diary,

But it only felt light, I the pain of banishment from the priory.

I was the first gibberish, she wrote with her heart out on a paper

She found more meaning and joy elsewhere in other things later.

Mountain and the cloud

We met in the mountains

Were fairytale happens,

Were the earth is green

Bountifully for the bovine.

There I saw you, slender

Like the gait of your river,

That returned your laughter.

Beautiful, you were ethereal,

Like unwritten poetry, surreal

Yet, shyness made you real.

Stars winked, your lips smiled

Trees swayed, your wrist played

Wind giggled, your eyes talked.

I spoke, and words meandered,

You… my thoughts surrendered.

Never did I ponder over your name

Perhaps I knew you better, fair dame.

You were, whom I loved in my poem,

Whom I craved with the jeroboam.

You spoke feelings and laughed at words,

The evening filled in with jovial chords,

The rest was said with sighs and sounds.

As the benevolent moon cried to sleep,

The clouds parted as they failed to keep

The brazen reality from dawning

And the honks rushed me out calling.

I had to leave that abode of yearnings

Surrendered to prudence’s claiming.

You never said a proper goodbye

Alas! There is nothing good in a bye.

I gazed and felt for the lonely cloud

That refused to answer calls aloud

And stayed aloof, adrift of its herd

Hugging your mountain warm and hard.

Then suddenly I saw the plains ahead

And remembered what the poet said

“The mountain is clearer to the climber from the plain”

I wished to see the cloud, mountain, and you, once again.

IT HAPPENS

Sometimes, poems become personal,

And I tend to take names.

It becomes more universal than

Just fun and games.

The white of the page consumes

The blue rhymes and tales.

Showing only some of the once familiar names.

Sometimes music makes me emotional

And it whispers me some names.

It becomes more than just eulogy

Of blue rains and flames.

The notes give me company

Singing in “Do re mi”

It is the silence that pains me for remembering names.

Sometimes, words become magical

And it subtly states the names.

Like a wild beast it runs off

That refuses to be tame.

The noise of the towns

The quiet of the hills

Echoes back rudely the mimicry of names.

Gibberish of a lonely mind

When I was sleeping, could I mumble?

Didn’t the collage so carefully and subconsciously,

Drawn and woven, whole heartedly and selflessly,

Catch a glimpse, or could it rumble

Against the empty walls of silence and solitude?

Like the lonely wave that just managed to elude

Everything, to just weep and crumble

At that vast but empty heart of the sea shore

Or was it like the tired one going door to door

Whom fate made the stranger

When I spoke, did I say?

About the dream I dreamt for,

Or ‘bout the things that I adore.

Perhaps it was like burning ashes

It isn’t afraid even if the fire catches

It is silent like the omnipresent air

true lover of the whimsical weather

it is willingly ever present there

tolerating his love’s scathing glare

Just to embrace her in a swirl of joyous harmony

like my silence fills in for my solitude’s symphony

Indian Rain

The little one grows fonder of the slow drizzle

And gets pampered by caring motherly giggles,

In a trifle he learns to fear the thunder storm,

Just to get a cozier, reassuring hug ever warm

What a bliss ‘twas to soak the mind in the gay mist

And listen to fantasies of the heroes raising their fist

The mood wandered through clouds accompanying the sky lark

And finally returned homeward with the Noah’s ark.

The rain grew naughtier with him in his boyhood

It jumped on and around him from ‘where it could.

Rain spoiled him with naked showers and puddles,

The recess and zest in life with innocent holidays;

Draped his dress like the new ink from a naughty quill

Only more innocently and playfully in colour and guile.

The boy knew from the first shake in the tree branches

Of the awaiting fondness in the atmosphere of rain kisses.

With his maturity the rain held for him expressions,

That were dusted away in life’s routine eliminations,

It then glanced at him from opened window pane

for the fine moment the mind is devoted to the rain.

It sprinkles lovingly on him with poem and symphony,

While the nostalgic breeze gives a romantic company.

That friendly world is rudely shunned and the dreams are halted

as rain tries in vain to break through the windows tightly bolted.

Today, the matured realist does not believe in the Noah’s ark

but when the rain hugged him in the alley deep and dark

The clover scented gale seemed to carry him in a trance to the old puddles

thus appeared the moment’s joy before him ridiculing the life’s riddles

He finds his sweet childhood in it sailing on a stray paper boat

Reminiscing of the like toys he made of the gibberish he once wrote.

Suddenly strikes the thunder, much like the old days, with flashes

The loner once again seeks a motherly hug with his wet eyelashes.

Call it what you will

The nights, when the rain has washed away all the sleep

Why does it not blow away the glum of sadness so deep?

Or is it that we pine to keep those scars that made us who we are

And dream and thrive on hope of that eluding clear dawn so far?

For even the sun takes a holiday and gets up very late,

Or is he merely smiling and twinkling at our fate?

The night sky is perplexed and knows not how to present

A red, blue or a violet hue to match the diamond crescent.

Neither does her lover the dawn, know how to console,

Are these drops the tears of joy or the words of the soul?

But the celestial omnipresence do they consider or care

Of the epic emotions they stage on the sweet scented air?

With much vigour, some have tried to interpret the symphony in vain,

Others have loved, cried, enjoyed or may have just soaked in the rain.

WILL YOU LISTEN?

You there, will you listen? I have stories to tell

I have carried them throughout this rugged trail.

They are of kings and his men

Who refuses to be woken

By the alarm of democracy.

They left behind a legacy

Of romantic castles and imposing forts.

May be they do not trust our courts

Now, that we have given the power of justice

To jesters, they did not think it would suffice

To struggle for this life.

So the king and his wife

Has opened the gate

For you and your date.

Care to come and dine with me there

Atop the hill and a sky smoky clear?

    You there, will you listen? I have poems to tell

I found them murmuring, crumbled along this trail.

They are of the beautiful garden

As artificial as the one of Eden.

The gardener grew some roses sweet,

Valued more than his blood and sweat.

The roses got praises

And became pricey by the day

Not loved nor praised

A man toiled night and day.

The roses mounted coats and hats

But never found those caring pats.

Tired of all these hollow caress

Slowly it withered with grace.

Throw it away then at once, you know, you must,

Now it smells of a man’s sweat and native dust.

 You there, will you listen? I have fables to tell

I found them written on walls, along this trail.

They are of brave soldiers,

Our knights and fighters,

Of the honest men,

The pious women,

Stillborn babies,

Not worshiped deities.

But, now the wall is broken,

The tales are forgotten

Numbers re-written

Facts sweetened

Hearts heartened

Their cries hidden

Their eyes cold

The fables old

Alas! Even the quill is SOLD

SOLD!

SOLD!

SOMEDAY

Someday, that day will come, after that long elusive night

Someday it will smear the wrong with the vermilion of right

Someday,

Then we’ll talk and debate and see

Mythical Atlantis rising from the sea.

The theories all blotched and tangled in the sea weed,

And then they dry down in the flame of our greed.

Then someday,

The bare mountains will bear trees and the trees will bear fruits

And the snow will melt in joy and worship at the fertile roots.

And Someday,

The raven will sing sweet and the cuckoo won’t be jealous

And their divine duet will pray for and heal us.

Monsoon shall come because the peacock will dance

And the peacock must dance because the seed wants its chance.

Someday,

We’ll battle, but not with guns nor with spear

The dying noise of laughter is all that we’ll fear

Someday,

We will shed our silence and protest in Berlin, and in Japan

And the Ganges will take the news to Mississippi and Jordan  

The rivers will return the water from our eyes

Stop the floods or famines and hush our cries.

 

Till then I need you, I need you to be mine

And also the healing lies oozing from the wine.

I need you to whisper and comfort me with lies

Because that is what maintains every knot and ties.

Every lie can murmur the dormant truth

Truth is the old age and lie just the youth.