Painting by Sudeshna Majumdar

Echoes of the Stream

Do I live on in your memory?
In endless doubt and hesitation,
Like effortless wind, unceasing and free?

Staying far away has now become too difficult —
Easier, perhaps, to shed this bland, neutral shell,
To break free from all restlessness
And find that ultimate love,
Where, laying my head in your lap
I trace the spell of longing woven into the air

Stepping carefully across the path,
I see — along the trail of your footsteps —
Handfuls of fallen bokul flowers.
Is it love in those deep honey-hued eyes,
Or the irresistible scent of blooming champa?
The riverbed hums with unborn tomorrows
But what can you offer,
Other than helpless, unfolding promises?
The sleepy moonlight’s drape
Lies forgotten in the open field,
While the firefly-memories flicker
Here and there…
Even in dimming embers,
A flood echoes through

Then — on the fog framed silence, in a slanted distance,
The ripples of thirst scatter,
Carelessly, but with perfect rhythm.

You and I — we burn endlessly.
Charred longing kneels in twilight’s hush
At silken threshold —
Wavering without anchor
Where do I place the heart swollen with unsent sighs?
Drunk on the aroma of drowned desire
The drift of old stories blends into waves,
Into the swirling velvet of green silence
and disappear

Verses of the Living Earth

In the cloud-blue hue of the sky,
an unfamiliar green spreads its veil.
From the unseen land of dreams,
the clouds send signals,
wrapped in the murmur of the breeze.

In the hour of light,
deep in the hollow of silence,
I’ve kept joy for you —
like fire: quiet, secret…
beyond the point of birth,
in a sacred shelter of soul.

With cloud and sun, rain and green,
I will gather the world —
Each step a syllable, each breeze a song
Each tree will whisper a line of green
and the world shall become a poem,
Spoken only in the waves of love.

At the estuary,
A midday wall lies shattered like glass.
Now and then—
A courtyard blooms with evening jasmine.
Step gently into this untimely hour.

Ah—stay well,
River water, rice fields,
And the faint scent of camphor on the breeze.

Here, the stars become goddesses,
In the fierce embrace of wandering night.

Smudged Kohl and Silent Stories

It was only meant to be a tale of lost roads,

very fathom resonates with the rain
Like a migrant’s wing choosing its flight—
Sky-blue dreams, and a single cloud-feather to roam.
That smudged kohl at the corner of the eye

nows well how much sorrow brims in salty tears.
Do you know—
Some fairytales are better left untold,
Wrapped in silence through the years?