Poetry Moment

by Jaydeep Sarangi (March 2018)

Notre-Dame in Winter, Albert Marquet, 1908

(In memory of Derek Walcott)
 

he gusty wind swept away all leaves

courting, little tricks, all dreams on a valentine evening.

Winter road crowd with men and waiting

to catch the late night train to another plane.

Shadows prevail. Men move between borders,

the keys they turn

create a door. It rains

with dazzling minds and blazing flashes in the sky.

 

The erratic river in me has a flow

creating whispers from the leaves green

of small mango trees behind my house here,

before the walls hiding houses. Doors deep.

 

I feel a sense of edge, craft my wings

of being part and yet apart.

There are ever grounds to cover

in every season, month by month

 

My life is a winter road. She left me alone.

Where storm clouds pile, cloud on cloud

sometime clouds rain, some die with the thunder.

 

I keep my spirit within my daily clothes,

a certain poetry of moments.

 

______________________
Jaydeep Sarangi is an bilingual writer, editor and translator. Widely anthologised and reviewed as a poet and a critic, Sarangi has six collections (From Dulung to Beas, Silent days, A Doorsomewhere, The Wall and Other Poems) of poems, latest being Faithfully, I Wait (2017) released in Adelaide. He has delivered keynote, plenary and invited speeches on Indian poetry, postcolonial literature and dalit literary movements in different continents. He has recently edited Stories of Social Awakening: Reflections of Dalit Refugee Lives of Bengal (2017). He has been involved in transliterating and editing Bangla dalit writings into English. Dr. Sarangi is on the editorial board of different peer reviewed journals of repute and has guest edited three issues for muse india. He is a senior faculty and teaches new poetry at the Dept. of English, Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College (University of Calcutta), Kolkata. He may be reached at: [email protected].

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