Poems: Of Alleys Filled With Shapes and Shadows  

Outram Ghat

Too much sameness and the world turn grey.

Sunrays cut in patterned lines on the Howrah Bridge.
the sky has turned into an artist’s palette
And the moment hung in the air.

The boatmen come and go, offer some measures
of the past, their mouths open now and then,
transfers melody to the muddy water.

All those lovers drink bees and it stung their lips, 
they whisper and their words explode in silence
in the middle of nowhere.

The walkers slowly let out their deep-chested laughs,
children nibbling peanuts, the women tousle their hair,
still assembling shouts into laughter.

The bleary evening comes with a soft little pack,
weaving stories and anecdotes of the natives,
You, me and the devotees surrender to the holy river.

Sunday Blues

All Sunday I watch my city from 
the glass window, the streets and 
alleys are so noisy here 
that I don’t quite like,
buses, cars, lorries only add carbon footprints,

I see shaggy dogs on the roadside, 
squirrels behind the tall tree,
so tiny that any sound may suffocate them.
canals behind the garden 
rushing from a different century

Pale sun, then evening, 
how easily the night drops anchor,
I listen to the Bhakti songs, so quiet, so fine-tuned,
breeze at the opened door, my skins shivery.
the voice that enters the room is the 
voice of my childhood,
my shirt smells of masala peanuts.

The city closes its cavities now,
 I breathe with darkness
my room is now 
full of shapes and shadows, 
with a long memory 
not able to touch the present,

I am afraid of falling sleep
I don’t want sleep 
to separate me from this cauldron.

Repression

Each punctuation is an aroma of wet earth, 
dry grain that makes the sparrows
breaking into resonances,
eyes walking towards the wooden door.
Deleting itself at the very moment
what you see is defined,

Perhaps, the story 
I’m looking for is buried beneath the soft tiles and in the murmuring of the ants.

everything rinses
of voices in the room, 
a set of drawing,
like an inheritance,
slowly withdraw
the heartbeat of repression.

Perimeter

the borders fade. These
hands know where a face
is emerged, a deep canyon
brimming with shadows
offer the place of refuge
until you get lost in the 
furrows, in the lineaments.

from there you start walking
under the birch tree, how easily
the music pulses through the
window, you will put your foot
down and live, you shiver there
inside, all night staring at the 
dark sky, wait for the dead letters.

Puzzle

I stammer to brainy people
to their wide eyes that cannot see 
or glares at single side of things,
thinking their success taking
the form of the linear progression.

within a few hours returns
the handprints on the wall
as if intricate puzzle pieces,
I sit and have to
put down my hands
seeing my own face as it
disappear slowly into the dark. 

Winter Verse

I listen to the verses of winter
so shivery, so dewy
cold womb and frozen palms
ages coil within
a pair of eyeglasses.

with footprints that labour
in the dirt and mud.
I’m going to give back to the trees
the leaves they have lost,
to the fallen feathers the bird,
to the sun sharp lights.

then I come back to
my warm houses.
and my heart to ripped cages. 

(Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator. He was nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021. )