A Poem On Hopes And Concerns For The New Year

Sometimes a new year is a seduction and sometimes a refuge
But every new year has a promise of a rough magic 
like bruised petals of a flower getting 
another chance to be watered and renewed. The yellowed noon 
before a new year in Calcutta smells 
of an overly baked cake, square and fluffy
Each noon before a new year is always too caramelized
Though this is a year of price rise

Before a new year, my left eye throbs in memory 
of the year almost passed. Three buses and a yellow taxi speed past 
the red post boxes near Esplanade east, 
a white ferry coos on the Hooghly
Their muffled screams slowly coil on the body of the Monument 
like hollow serpent-skins 
Calcutta aka Kolkata, last days of December, polluted air, 
festivities in Park Street, warm winter, Chinese rice lights, 
crows on old tram wires, three beggars 
dance in the Queens’s Way 
I am standing near the General Post Office with a valise 
full of letters to the past 
and the New Year greetings cards 
Crumbs of the baked noon on my back, a pomegranate in my hand
Each red seed is for a year, a departed friend and a relative
There is a stain on the ceiling of the sepia straw sky. A kite 
watches the old city from above. Like Marcus Aurelius. Like fate. 

The hands of the grand clock atop the white dome 
of General Post Office point 
in opposite directions 
Like Jean Jacques Rousseau’s pointed fingers to Hobbs,
only in different directions. They stand back-to-back 
like the old year and the new. Are we heading towards
good times or going back? 
Should we go back in time and settle 
in its best days with our dead relatives and a stable price index? 
Years go by, historians and the economists
have their moments of bliss. Yet longing exists, 
though only in photographs. More and more people sleep
in the pedestrian walks 

An old gunmetal bell from St. John’s Church 
tolls only once
A clean and simple octave. Decisive. It sounds reassuring 
and self-confident. I hand over the letters 
and the greeting cards to the young post office clerk 
and leave
Life’s plainness is a pre-Homer folktale 
Old and new are always paired

(Sekhar Banerjee is a Pushcart Award (2021) and Best of the Net (2023) nominated poet.  The Fern-gatherers’ Association (Red River, 2021) is his latest collection of poems. He has been published in Stand Magazine, Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Muse India, Kitaab, Madras Courier, Outlook, The Wire and elsewhere.  He lives in Kolkata, India.)