Poem: Dead Rosary

Every hotel room has some flaws — this or that
You search it out
before breakfast. The bathroom has a noisy faucet
as if a whole river is trapped 
somewhere
You can almost hear gulls screeching, water gurgling 
and nothing more  

You pull back the heavy hotel curtains, beige, in the windows
to find an emerald tin roof 
of a wooden house, now closed, and an old jarul tree 
with mauve flowers. A whole assembly of wet crows 
looks at you 
from its branches, only slightly curious 
Nothing more, nothing less 

The mountains are not visible now. They are brushed 
by the rain, 
a single master stroke in watercolour
But you know they are there 
beyond the watery white of the sky. Like our eyes in sorrow

Now that you are visiting your old hometown
without a home
at the soggy toe of the Himalayas, you can somehow empathize 
with your friends and enemies;
they also touch 
their own grief and move away, one by one

You close the window and open the wardrobe and find 
an old Tibetan rosary 
hanging from a clothes hook. 
Someone might have left it there in a hurry

You keep the rosary on the writing desk 
and look at its 108 beads questioningly 
as if awaiting some answer 
or further instructions before you touch it 
with your right thumb and heart and count your thoughts,
one by one 
But, around the rosary, there is a dead hum 

You close the wardrobe and open the windows 
in the opposite direction;
you find an old woman, Tibetan, 
walking on the Hill Cart Road with a red umbrella
in one hand 
and a rosary in the other. She wears black lipstick.

(Sekhar Banerjee is a Pushcart Award (2021) and Best of the Net (2023) nominated poet.  He has been published in Stand Magazine, Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Muse India, Kitaab, Madras Courier, Outlook and elsewhere.  He lives in Kolkata, India.)