Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya, INDIA

BINDING LOVE

Your pounding heart

And the fond incline

Of your erect form

Touched my fancy with

The beauty of desire.

There’s that well

Of your yearning eyes

Brimming with memories,

Often aroused

By present reality.

Thirty six or sixty three –

Age makes no difference;

As long as the banyan

Puts forth leaves

There’s rejuvenation.

Binding love is rare

Sacrilege to façade.

What keeps hurting you

Can chop the roots

Of denigration.

Yet, somehow

I need not speak;

A little wine in

Quiet company

Is more desired.

SHORES APART

There was once a man

With hurt pride

And a bleeding heart

Who sang melodies of fulfillment,

Welcomed every travelling smart

Woman of her choice

To tread yet again

On his aching heart.

I warned him not to go overboard

With docility as it were…

The man in him I tried to wake up

And he shuddered at the insignificance.

There he lay shattered

And I on the opposite shore stood helpless,

As much as I would want to restore

The blighted pride

And his forlorn consciousness.

Often in my dreams I see him wafting

Ashore on my side

And me nursing the heavy head,

But it’s the waking hours that tell the lie

And bleeding still he lies listless.

When creation placed us shores apart

Our will could never cross the sea.

Our hearts can race and match the pace

And that’s just as much as we can expect.

THE WEAPON OF INFAMY

We never go beyond the arms and the eyes

Never ever seek the smell of semen.

We never linger in the fumes of the cunt

And rush to rinse us of the residual stain.

We never bite into flesh of those we hug

We never tousle limbs and check their stretch

We never think of hair as necessary ornament

And never leave behind a body in pain.

Yet poetry, so to say, a weapon of infamy

Serves men to defile all womankind

With words of unkind ingratitude

Even if a life has gone in service blind.

I for one would rather bear in mind

The lyrics pulling men’s dirty legs,

Rich in sarcasm and profound in lore

Witty and poignant and poetry at its best.

Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya is an Indian writer. She has been awarded the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi's Best Book Award for English Novel of the year 2016. She is Associate Professor of English, Postgraduate Government College, Sector-11, Chandigarh. Her forthcoming novel is called Still She Cried.

---

Women, Power & Creativity :: Setu, March 2019