ALIEN

I have not touched that red earth for decades.
I have not smelt the stored up secrets of its warm flesh
after the rain vaporized and returned to the sky.
I have not kneaded my fists on that earth mother’s red anger.
It is now become so alien that it hurts to even think of it.

Is it possible to love something so hard
and yet, never feel a part of it?
Is it possible to gather and distribute my inheritance
in small talk served up as hors-d’oeuvres?
Acknowledge to that silence in my heart
that being Bengali and the Bengaliness of my being
is in reality only a notional thing?

Trans-migrated literature and philosophy is refrigerated dessert
served through the sweetness of the language, nothing else.
Yet, it satisfies for it provides tender refuge
from the harshness of our successful worlds. Even though,
you know that you will never go back again.
For to return is to retreat and retreat is acceptance of defeat.

But the poets who loved this earth before us,
always ran down the same red soil pathways;
and danced across the same carp and lily
filled ponds. These were the poets who
tossed up their hearts to kiss the same clear blue
autumn sky. But they never prepared us –
you, me, him and her – for this sandbar existence.

Maybe our bones know who we truly are.
Maybe these questions will find answers
in the flames flowering on our pyres
when the small knotted bones at the small of our backs
crack up with laughter, bringing to life
this very notional thing in the rituals of a Bengali grief.

DESECRATION

The Rakta Karabi blooms in blood red defiance.
Stupefying my neighbor’s patch of pious flowers.
A pristine gray sky tilts with its load of secrets. But
no cloud splits apart. And, man does not yield

In this tug-of-war between nature and man
rivers in their rage whip off the clothes of fish,
cruelly making them thresh for shame
in the mud. There is no one to protest
their molested dignity. There is no one
to protect my neighbor’s flowers.

But the Rakta Karabi blossoms have defied
protection. They have already
accepted their fate. And they have
let out their blood to pierce the sky.

Each blossom protruding like the violated parting
of a pre-pubescent virgin’s thighs.

(Note: Karabi is the Bengali word for Oleander; Rakta means blood in Bengali; the oleander flowers here are of the blood red variety.)
 

SUNSET

It is at this time of the day
when dusk gathers into its heart
all the blackness
that the departing sun forgot to ignite

It is in this now-time of the approaching night
when your heart comes loose and falls
to the ground
shattering instantly
into a thousand emotions that you never knew
could taste so bitter

Afterwards,
the after taste lingers on like a burr
that you picked up on your way back
from the Lantana shrubs across the garden hedge.
The setting sun strokes on
just the right colours for your retreating mood.
And you remember a time when childhood
was not a condition to be mulled
over coffee.

These days, however, your heart shatters
at the exact axis
of the disappearing sun.
You don’t hear the crash,
rather you feel it beneath your eardrums
as you watch the vivid red of sunset
running off like wriggling snakes
that have been milked clean
of their sleep inducing poisons.