1. Mist
2. A Longing
3. Have you seen...
4. Malaise
5. A Plea
6. In A Happy Mood
7. Mountain Stream
8. The Boy Who Used To Come
9. The Grand Climax
10. Coleridge
11. On visiting a place of tranquility
12. The Dry Gargoyle
13. A Mossy Vision
14. Celebrating Innocence
15. Observations
16. Full Moon
17. The Statue of a Dancing Damsel
18. On seeing myself as a child
19. Primary School
20. I am an island
21. Let our lives
22. Tonight
23. Trench Coat Mafia
24. Redemption
25. I Met a Cherub in My Dream
1)Mist.
"Mist" was her name and she was in my way
And the wind was all silent and away.
Neither the sun nor the moon are to blame,
It was the breeze; that the breeze never came.
I walked in hte fog with two sightless eyes
And then I heard her cry: She cries! She cries!
She cried on my shoulder and on my chest,
She cried with such tears that moistened my breast.
She hugged me tightly and fell on her knees
As fall the waves on the shores of the seas.
And as my sight cleared I made brisk my walk;
She fell further as time ticked on the clock.
And clung to my feet she did drain in rain
The saltless tears of a bosom in pain.
2)A Longing.
Like a forgotten mischief you
Came to my place filling it full
With fragrance new;
I saw you and helped you to pull
Me towards your glowing heart's gleam,
And days passed by as pass a night
In a lone dream.
It was then that you took your plight.
Now all I do is but to wait
To get intoxicated on
Some future date
By the fragrance of your presence
Though to you I'll never word my
Heart's allegiance.
3)Have you seen the beauty of wild flowers-
Spread under the birchen green,
Among sepia-tinted grass,
In myriad hues and sheen,
Here and there in scattered mass?
Whom no human hand did touch.
Nurtured by nature they grew
Usequestered as such
As if in mustered milleu.
They grow beside unknown ways
That led me once beguiled
Through fetid funneled forays
To more flowers of the wild.
Die vagabonds, once you will,
Die sailors or those on shore.
You all die once, a little,
But I'll die a little more.
4)Malaise.
I am sitting silently on
A white bed-sheet. My feet are hidden
With a white bed-cover. In this
Room with white-washed walls i'm bed-ridden.
The ceiling is also white-washed,
And melts into the sky washed with white,
Under which a colourful life
Splashing colours make a happy sight.
Yet the sky is not stained by such
Living colours, like a doctor's apron
Unstained of the colour of blood
After a minor operation.
5)A Plea.
Stay by my side when I am done,
Though the world may not be there,
And you be the only one.
Shield me from the waves of the sea,
That I may safely sail through,
To reach the land of Poetry.
Hope that even if I fail now,
There's a day in the future,
When land shall touch my ship's prow.
Let my sea-faring never fail,
Though the world might think that this,
Voyage is of no avail.
6)In a happy mood.
The cotton has come out like intestines:
The pillow is torn yet again,
Where the inkpot fell and broke yesterday-
The ink has produced a blue stain,
The bedsheet is crumpled like a paper
Where I held it tight in my grip
And that blood on the novel is because
I bit it along with my lip.
Those few things are the signs that tell me that
Last night I had been in pain.
But as with the sun I rose in the morn
Like mad I was laughing in vain.
Was it because of some happiness, or,
Because the pain had ceased again?
7)Mountain Stream.
Like dancing feet descending down
I saw the swift stream slip softly
Through caverns down to that down-town
Where children were laughing in glee
To see their paper-boats set sail
Oarless among ripples and waves
As all of them flow down the dale
Below- below the icy caves.
And then from the book of Nature I read
And all of a sudden I came to know
That nowhere my efforts with oars has led
So on my voyage oarless I must go
And remember what Lucretius once said,
"No single things abide, But all things flow."
8)The boy who used to come.
He used to come everyday.
He came in the sun.
He came in the rain.
And he came with a hum.
He came with his lyre to fulfill his desire
Of warming his feet over the fire.
And he came with a hum.
One day it thundered.
And with the storm came God.
He said, "String thy lyre and sing what thou aspire."
He strung his lyre and began to play.
He played in the sun.
He played in the rain.
He played and winter came
And his music was muffled in the snow.
People a mile or so away
Still heard him sing.
then one day it thundered and God said,
"Thou playest well and a good tune thou did hum.
Come."
9)The Grand Climax.
The flower was sighted and noticed by temptation;
The flower was plucked and molested by emotion;
The grand climax- all helpless, hopeless: fatal conclusion.
10)Coleridge.
The picture of a great artist
Who paints his mind's delirium,
Whose paints are as unclear as mist,
Whose brush has consumed opium,
Whose canvas is smoky and rough,
Whose art is blonde obscurity-
No horizon is wide enough,
A canvas to paint your beauty.
11)On visiting a place of tranquility.
Amid the crowd of silence I had walked,
And heard the tranquility of nature
In the gentle twittering og the birds
As they soar motionlessover their brood;
And seen the monastic monks eat their food
Whose pleasure-smellhad diffused in the air
To nourish the mind of the visitors
As in their meditation they talk.
Beside the slow meandering river
I meanderedthrough paths unknown to me
And the solitary path led me near
The wonderful place of serenity.
My spirit of frenzy vigorously
Resonated with tranquility.
12)The Dry Gargoyle.
With its eyes still in gaze the gargoyle sought
And I saw it oblivious of its thought.
The bulky mass of stone with its wings unfurled,
The head a snout with the tongue lolling out,
And the visage formed the gargoyle spout.
Its hands on that non-entity were curled.
And the structure of stone which I didn't see-
What is remaining?- had long ceased to be.
But a hope! A hope of unweathered stone.
It hopes with water-weathered tongue, unclean,
For rains; not that will be- Ah me! bemoan-
But the rains that have been and that had been.
13)A Mossy Vision
I sit here on the mossy stone
Under the tree with mossy shoot
And breathe in deeply sighs and moan
In my mossy brain's mossy lute.
The music of my mossy lute
Has no mossy ear but for mine
And for me the whole world is mute
For I have drunk of but the wine.
And in my drunkeness I see
The darkness of my mossy eye
And in my blindness Time is me
For yonder a younger Sun lie.
14)Celebrating Innocence
I saw a child with a small lamb
Skirting the green bushes behind
Cuddling the creature on her lap
Communing with it in her mind.
She in this gentle act of hers
Was like a fountain of a spring
And the small lamb in its shyness
Was the fresh fountain's mirroring.
Seeing their play of innocence
I grew wistful of my years spent,
That won't ever again spring in
And save me from my banishment.
But it will be unbecoming
If I am to lament hence
For in their image unawares
I am celebrating innocence.
15)Observations
The dust is flying, the stone is lying,
The rock is sighing, the hill is dying;
The cloud is flying, the moon is lying,
The sea is sighing, the sun is dying;
The leaf is flying, the fruit is lying,
The bud is sighing, the tree is dying;
The light is flying, the earth is lying,
The heat is sighing, the sound is dying;
The bird is flying, the cat is lying,
The cow is sighing, the man is dying.
16)Full Moon
Yesternight in Morpheus' cloak
I stole into a child's sweet dream,
Where through the haze of purging smoke
I saw the dream-world in full gleam.
Tonight I gaze at the full moon
And wait for the sun to shine soon,
I'll sail against the winds of time
In the waning moon's fortnight-clime.
17)The Statue of a Dancing Damsel
What is it that stands in the dark corner?
What is it that harps my muse into tune?
It's a statue of a dancing damsel
That made my senses from the world immune.
As my vision dissolved into darkness
Beauty poured into the cups of my eyes
And as my vision vibrated with time
The music in my ears began to rise.
I heard the music of those days when two
Mortal feet had danced for the sculptor's eye,
To provide him inspiration enough
To immortalise the feet that here lie.
Though those mortal feet have long ceased to dance
These immortal creations will remain
If not in stone, then in some great poet's
Musical musing and dancing refrain.
The silent nuances from those two feet
Flowed through the rigid body quite unheared
Like in the firmament the flapping
Of the wings of a solitary bird.
Yet I heard something as sweet as swansong,
That brought to flame my muse's feeble fire.
It was the melody of those two strings
That I strung and struck in the sculptor's lyre.
18)On Seeing Myself As A Child
Brimming with tears of innocence,
Those are the most beautiful eyes,
And the eyelids are now heavy,
For over them Morpheus lies.
These are still those beautiful eyes,
But tears of innocence they lack,
And even though Morpheus is still there,
He has a dagger in his back.
19)Primary School
They have a look in their eyes-
Puzzled! Astonished! Perplexed!
"Is that clear to you all?", I ask.
They nod their heads vigorously.
And I discerned some nodding lies
Hoping to get away with luck
When I set them the daily task
To do in class rigorously.
But there are some who look at me
With radiant eyes in awe-struck stare
For I have unlocked in a game
The magic box for them to see.
Alas! who? but so few are there
To unlock, for me, the same.
20)I am an island
I have told Tom, Dick and Harry,
But they will never believe me.
Often I have stood in the dark
With Tom, Dick and Harry beside
And havve seen darkness like a lark
Between us spreading its wings wide.
I have cried, "I am an island!"
And they have cried, "Let there be light!"
So with them in the light I stand
Without darkness veiling my sight.
Yet as light gathers like swallows
I get surrounded by a band-
Circled by my unseen shadows,
I am, forever, an island.
21) Let our life resonate with music
So play on with the string and the wind
And let such sonoreity fill
The bubbles of vacuum in mind
Which deflated spirits left behind.
Give a pair of ears to our life,
And tune the tattered threads of life,
That lie like shattered shreds of chords,
In resonant philharmony
Which is the soul of such a life
That has overcome the handicaps.
22) Tonight
I am standing on a slippery,
Phantom stone with the swift flowing river
Hurtling round the sun. Where is it's source?
Where is it's mouth?All I know is I am-
Either the source or the mouth or both.
Did anyone know , when chaosreigned,
That tonight I'll be diving for pearls?
I hope no one else knew. I hope I knew.
Since I do not remember the past,
I hope; for I know I always exist.
A speck of dust in chaos, energy,
Or standing on phantom, slippery stones.
23) Trench Coat Mafia
"I hate niggers, I hate athletes and I
Kill on the twenty-first day of April;
I kill those who differ from the common
And I kill those who are ordinary;
I kill those who say they are innocent
And I kill those whom I think are culprits;
I hate Hispanics, I hate you and I
Kill on the twenty-first day of April.
Men have killed, Hitler did so, I do so
And I hate Jesse 'Black' Owens, you know;
I have the gun so I fire the bullet,
I will kill because I hate minorities ???"
We all have black trench coat in our closet-
But Trench Coat Mafia are minorities.
24. Redemption.
Ask?Ask not what to ask.Redeem.
Guess!
They will make you a laughing stock.
Guess!
Yesterday I met Susan.
Guess!
-Susan,who lives in our back alley.
Guess!
Who is Susan? A name,a name.
Guess!
A name,a name. "Shazam",Susan.
Guess!
Susan:a name heard in back alleys.
Guess!
Susan who used to live an hour...
Guess!
A day,a week,a month,a year...
Guess!
A jubilee ago she lived; she died.
Guess!
I met and redeemed her.Guess not.
Guess!
25. I Met a Cherub in My Dream.
From the renascence of wonder
There came gliding a Greek sculpture,
Falling through the cascades of time
Bridging the chasm that did rupture
When I first got a glimpse of him-
A winged creature still in its flight,
Stilled by the sculptor's moving hands,
The Cherubim of my deep delight.
Between the pillars of slow curves
Crowned by the heroic arches,
I saw the flutter of those wings
Whose wide span of stony weight lurches
Heavy on the air beneath it,
Which had half blown the drapery
That was to conceal his body's
Well alligned, sinewy tapestry.
With both his legs lost in a leap
He stood frozen in his motion,
Like the sparkle of the lightning
Caught bursting into full proportion,
On the night sky brooding behind,
And a single star with wild gaze
Spreading through the wide firmament
Its mellowed twinkling beams in the haze.
And the broad pedestal of stone
Forming the ageless substratum
Unswelled and full of compactness
Bore the huge load of age-old tiresome,
Through the foot of that Cherubim,
With nerves heaving undulations
Like the soft, silent waves risen
In the calm of a sun-bathed ocean.
Copyright: Amit Shankar Saha (1994-1999-).
Amit Shankar Saha
