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Swapan Sarma
In Search of you
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Searching you in in Me,
known alleys and passionate roads,
pretty park and several banks of the Ganges,
fond hours in Kolkata coffee house,
and hours lost whispers to my ear .
In this world of dying time
debris of love spreads,
now longing for pregnant hours
once lost, to make a form in musing.
That form ,the source of burden of memory ,
is my Self still .
Searching you everywhere
means return of the stories
by flapping their wings
in the land of my aged heart .
Searching you makes my life meaningful
like the full-grown tree in blossom.
Reading you
Even intro can’t be completed
in reading your
interesting face
Let alone plumb depth of yours.
Day in and day out
I keep on reading you ---
the ripple of the pretty distant
But alas! even the intro not completed.
Sad solitude longs for you
to find completion.
But in this short and uncertain life
a timeless composition you seem to be .
Only for reading you between the lines
time dances in delight like anything
The more I read you, the more endless you become,
as if taking off your Sari does not end
like that of Droupodi* in Mahabharat .
Yet reading you is a word of honour to myself .
* Droupodi is a female character in Hindu epic Mahabharat. She was sought to be disrobed by Dushason but the latter couldn’t do so because Lord Krishna saved her by providing endless clothes . So Sari was endless.
Only Answer
Your presence everywhere ,
finding you as precious find
answers to all my questions
up till now unanswered ,
are available .
Endless questions crowd in on me:
What’s endless war for in this world ?
What’s hatred for in a humble social milieu ?
What’s greed for in man and great nations ?
Perceiving your presence everywhere
I feel your smiling silence answering:
lack of pure love and relinquishing Self .
Finding you as a precious find—
an omnipresent being
in the moon-lit continent of my mind
I remember your answer.
Liberty
A tender heart can’t free herself from the torturous time ?
Blood oozes out from the depth of that feeling heart,
day in and day out , mind’s death is evident .
Brooking insult, forced bedding and male barking
make the heart visualize herself a vulnerable insect .
Liberation of mind is a choice .
So the oppressed heart feels at times hers’ the sky ,
under a craving for being drenched in morning sunshine
and setting eyes on the scene of flying white crane
to get the feel of liberty
which fiefdom of four walls can’t give .
So the carefree heart longs for the language of cornfield,
true farmer’s love and care in breeding corn
to win love for years..
Lacerated heart feels if loveless walls intolerable,
why mourning for the coveted individual liberty
or brooking bondage or fawning in the family for years ?
Rather, it needs a fly far from four walls .
Freedom is a free choice,
and how to win it solely depends on seekers
The doorway
Groping in darkness for doorway
Whenever I happen to touch
I feel the presence of an invisible wall
Shouldn’t I know
whence comes the inaudible music
blowing in through the window and doorway ?
Inside the glowworm-lit ,
I notice a static vision .
As I touch it , I feel you – the doorway .
Rose not in Bloom Cries
Having seen dream’s grave
matured rose not in bloom cries soundless
for it would wither some day
and her love for gardener ends soon.
But the multi-colored current of life’ll be
flowing indifferent for ever .
The wishes of every flapping wings like that of rose
long for bigger sky to fly
but unable to realize the wishes.
Flapping wings fall frustrated
just as rose fades at a certain aged time and falls.
Rose not in bloom cries also in me soundless
in the world of dying time.
Am I then the soundless cry of eternity?
The shore of a Heart
A passenger of the infinite like me
pretends to be unknown .
He's a discoverer almost close to the shore of her heart.
But still the land of a heart yet to be discovered
like America before 1492
while Santa Maria reaching it’s shore . .
Doesn’t she feel a bewildered mind of the night
craving for hearing her unheard voice ?
Mad senses of the discoverer flutter
just to fly weightless
thinking of her and being in her feeling sky.
The shore of her heart isn’t far .
Yet thirty plus pretension that fights shy of the discoverer
builds up a plinth of mystery.
To demystify this rare mystery
is the be-all and end-all of the discoverer.
Sound
Touring a long ragged road I trudge on ,
mist ahead
mist behind
is white darkness following me ?
Or am I following the same in front of me ?
Walking down the long hilly road
I hear an unheard foot steps
trudging on along with me as it were
just as my shadow follows me
at an aged summer noon
without speaking to me.
In trying to find out the source of the sound
I find someone walking down in Me
with soundless song.
Is this the song I carry in my heart
for the life of me ?
To Mother Teresa
Mother, You too say, “Love thy neighbor”.
But if cruel horns found on love’s head,
if it changes form to get ready to bite,
how come I look upon that neighbour as God ?
Isn't my life precious and promising ?
Mother, you say love begins with smile.
But can I smile looking at the cheat eye
with no language or feel of love ?
Can one, not eligible for pardon, be my love ?
Sorry, my love doesn’t bloom in the bestial surrounds
where cruel teeth and paws of love reign .
Mother , my meaningless blathering is born
in the womb of my hurt experience
If raising question is wrong, pardon this fool.
On the Seashore
When the light blue waves came close to me
dead memories woke up,
as passion’s sunrise long past was back again,
my existence seemed to be full of wavy foam.
Blue waves were like numberless tail-feathers of peacock
crowded in on one pessimist in nature,
life once mixed with another as if returned anew
on the known shore of the vast blue.
Having seen those tail-feathers
a feel of regeneration reigns supreme in my mind.
The birth of monsoon seemed near
and the lost moon of eighteen-year-old as if returned
on the seashore at the breaking down of waves .
Oh ! sea, I went to you for an unheard assurance in dream:
"Your other Self is within me,
I can give you the embodied past lost years back. "
So did I go to you — the sea
to find a wave , lively and lovely,
lost at your shore years back .
Bio: Swapan Sarma is an Indian Bengali poet of the nineties. He has nine books poems published in Bangla, his mother tongue. He also writes short stories , a collection of which has been published recently. Ten poems sent are in fact translations from Bangla. He is currently polishing two manuscripts in English for international readers.
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