A Kind of Death

when you feel like you contain nothing
except ashes, smoke and dust

when you stare at walls and realize
that you built them

when you stumble through ancient paths
and clutch only air

when you hear laughter bounce off the floor
and cannot remember how to smile

when you feel the rain on your face
like stings of poison darts

when you see visions of words
fade into shadows in a purple sky

when you know you cannot
give anything in return

when you don't know a thing
except that you can't live

this way

Monsoon Vignette [ekphrasis]

How tenuous toys the world they say
like a dewdrop poised on a lotus leaf
a shimering noise in its quavering way
                  and all so brief

How wondrous blooms the world meseems
like a castle festooning the vacant air
it's spun from looms of lunacy's dreams
                  where foul or fair

Dumbfounding arrives the world indeed
like a field mouse dry on a puddled frog
astoundingly aye it upholds frail need
                  with rain agog

A cuckoo sky

A cuckoo mind breaks loose
on the grasshopper wind
on borrowed wings of
cotton-light clouds.

As cuckoo silences get lost
in green grass fields like
skittering butterflies.
from one reticence to another.

The wayward heart plays with
the frenzied breath
across winter’s picket fences,
as I sit peeling
the orange sun in evenings lap.

And countless nights are born into autumn glaze
as sundown breezes, wild
in a desire to sleep, undone.
And right at that unfastened moment,
my cuckoo heart breaks open into
the green of rainforests
like the galloping hoof of an agile buck.

Communally hated!

This is me, a martyr,
Bleeding inside, lacerated,
With a thousand wounds inflicted,
By all of you, strangers, whom I hate.

You who deprived me of my livelihood,
You who raped our women,
You who brought your skills and toil,
Where I was comfortable with my existence.

You should die for your sins,
There’s no forgiving your greed,
You who snatch our money,
And money order it to your kin, must die!

I am good, you are bad,
You have no right to exist,
A world without you is my dream,
You who manipulate my destiny.

You live on my soil, drink my water,
And don’t respect my culture,
You bring your alien rituals,
And pollute my environs.

You are people whose rages,
Have been compromised in smiles,
When you laugh, you do not,
Laugh with me, but at me!

For your transgressions you must flee,
For the harm you have done,
We must teach you a lesson,
And kick you out of our homeland, our state.

goodbye

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. - Book of Lamentations 1.12

it takes only seven fragile letters
to hold the burden of moments about to
disappear...how i hate
the bottom-right corner of my laptop
that displays day, date, time;
how i hate my eyes straying there
(why do we follow those who slip away? tick tick tick...boom!)

it takes seven letters rushing in
to open a door and let someone hurtling out
without getting hurt...how i hate
the seas you cross leaving me on burning sand
that swallows what remains;
how i fear to stay, how i dread to follow
(remember what happened to pharoah? clip clop clip clop...whoosh!)

just seven letters remain observing
silence for the waste of space in emptiness
that is left behind...how i hate
my room, my music, the sky outside my window
that will soon become the center
of my life, my grief, my grave, how i fear
(who will remind me to breathe, to breathe? inhale exhale, in...)

seven letters, seven sins,
seven lines falling one over the other
without rhyme...how i hate
this feeling of containing just ashes and dust
in the absence of those who pass by
and disappear as if they've seen a ghost
(who am i in this burning bush except a myth? nothing else...)

seven letters
die stillborn in our throats,
stifled by the other words
we speak to build a bridge across silences;
seven letters
form cross-bars to lock and store
our tears.

CLEOPATRA

All else notwithstanding (and it wasn’t much
by mores of time and place) history finds
for her. One can see her juggling brothers,
wooing Rome, looking for ominous signs
from the less kindly disposed others
who viewed Alexandria as a touch.

Not easy too her bit of cheek on the Tiber,
flaunting son complete with sire’s name:
that needed nerve. From their villas
the wives watched like hawks as she came
in triumph to shake an empire’s pillars,
silk and steel entwined in her fibre.

But she was doomed. Fate would intervene
with the Ides; and with her patron went
whatever Egyptian wind that bore her sails.
Actium did the rest. She was spent.
She came home to asps; and the tales
clung like unguents to embalm a queen.

***

POINTS OF VIEW

Let’s put things down. There’s the man,
“Ecce Homo”- forget the irony for a minute
and be literal if we can.
Baptised, Jew, 33 as far as you can pin it,

give or take a year. Good looking too,
though the portraits are copies – unreliable
at best, and descriptions are few.
Only the charisma’s undeniable.

Attractive to women no doubt. The Son
of God could hardly be otherwise
than the nonpareil Perfect One.
Certainly the most arresting eyes!

And then there’s the Magdalene,
the most famous – no, forget the name
by which she’s so unfairly been
reviled, the object she became:

the man himself preached compassion,
remember? We shall do no more
than follow, and in our own fashion,
dispel the myth of the whore;

although, admittedly, the slander of ages
must take a while to die. Spare her
then the pious pulpit outrages,
the common urge to tear her.

Consider her instead as wronged –
there’s nothing empirical in scripture
to deny her what belonged
to her: she suffered by depicture.

Thus, no longer base, she could
be lover, wife, mother, all
in the fold of Christian good.
A worthy married woman withal.

***

Two Translations from Jibanananda

Horses

We still are not dead- yet, ceaselessly, vistas are
born:
Mohin's horses graze upon moonlit autumn fields,
Like prehistoric horses- still grazing, grass-greedy
Upon the grotesque dynamo of this earth,
Stable scents drift in, in the crowded night-wind;
Sad hay sounds fall on the steel machines;
Tea-cups, like sleeping kittens-devoured
by leprous dogs
Go frozen in the restaurant over there
The paraffin lamp goes out in the stable
blown out by time's quietus
Touching the moonlight of the horses' neolithic
quiet.

Enthroned

'Rather write a poem yourself-'
I offered, smiling ruefully; the shadow-man did not
answer;
I realized- no poet he, but enthroned posturing:
Manuscripts, commentaries, footnotes, ink and pen
Make up his royal seat- no poet- undecayingly,
imperishably
Professorial; toothless- eyes impotent mucous
filled;
Wages a thousand a month - another thousand and
a half
Come from scavenging the flesh, worms of dead
poets;
Even though such poets had wanted the strange
comfort
Of hunger love fire - had surfed in shark filled
waves.

© Arka Mukhopadhyay, 2006

A Haiku....

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When Others Sleep

others sleep
while you and i watch the sky
turn to various shades of blood alternating
between hot and cold and dead
in our heads

others sleep
while you and i dissipate words
to exorcise images of losses recurring
in the time and space and silence
of our hearts

others sleep.
we watch others.
and wonder why we've forgotten how.
others sleep.
we dream.