Poetry by Gopal Lahiri

Gopal Lahiri

Night inside

I notice a few stars and
all nights of galaxies,
the words they mutter
of touch and trace
reveal nothing.

Life waiting to be lived out
There is beauty around us
and there is anger and violence.

Still I wait
Object to nothing,
Unnoticed the star gazing.

The scissor moon stripping blood.

Life becomes noisier
More obfuscating is the wrinkled face
of the aging clouds.

Blinded by pellets
Stories of horror and terror splatter all around.
Flowers fall off.

Carpet the ground with pink and yellows.

Somewhere along the way
nights foaming at the mouth.

Dreamers ask
will you ever get out of the
windswept reeds, salty water
and the brush of plumage.

There is still so many births.
Standing on the margins
I love to move in your shadow
of unspoken words and

dreams of hopes.
……………………………………………………

My Morning

The blood is near
To rectify my ways
In narrow and dirty alleys
May not own up at the end.

The charcoal night is poison or nothing
Leaning over the young trees
Bows to the fringe stars
Converge on the broken walls,

Scars and wounds
Perhaps appear in the dark
Shadows playing a mind game.
With the abject misery

As it sometimes happens
Inspiration, awards and more
Hidden in moon rays
May not appear at all.

And with every passing of
Lights of various kinds,
My morning still reaches out
To the tweets of the tiny birds.
……………………………………………………

Subtraction

Of the beginnings and endings.
every small absence is a
Subtraction.

You can smell coming the
Appearance of truth,
Uncover the ugly face.
They say, the image of the soul.

And what of Artemis? The eyes
Working on a secret code
See me, before the prayer,

The curved moon staying late
Into the night, gasping out loud.
The city comes into view
With the kids on the street
Work through the parade.

Rumble along the winding mind.
The slokas chanted by the monks
With the stooped gait of the
Human chain, teaching genetics.
……………………………………………………

Ennui

The garden glistens in sunlight now.
All those sweet little flowers
Calling all children.

Dark shadows and ghosts are
In their calmness,
Creating space for words to add further.

I remember how grim the moonlight was

Formless landscape buries our dream
Raising debates on key connection
Between the gossiping friends.

A need to escape from everything
I have given up seeking love.
The age old stories echo in the temple spires.

Listening to the final couplets,
To create clarity, to counsel caution.
This see-and-be-seen meeting breeds only tedium.
……………………………………………………

Shard

Perhaps consenting, listening to
The voice unheard till now,
Something that is missing,
There will be time
to fill in.

In a world outside and beyond
My mother able to rest after the day’s work
Tear drops trapped between her palms,
Each page
lies open.

The light from the stained glass
Puts the arms in my waist,
Rows and rows of books
Teaching the late evening
metaphor.

Sins that transpired in the past
And the half-moon we always want
To slit the throat of the struggling humans
Never weave a dream in
our tenuous skin

On a surprise visit, after a long wait
Newly alive and seldom radiant
In the deep and rough water,
Sea horses now learn
seven habits.

Standing against the spray painted wall
My cornered soul can smell only dead flower,
Never in a hurry to identify murky
Shadows on a windy
summer night.
……………………………………………………

Short Bio:
Gopal Lahiri was born and grew up in Kolkata. He is an earth scientist by profession (passed out from Presidency College, Kolkata) and currently lives in Mumbai. He is a bilingual poet, writer, editor, critic and translator and widely published in Bengali and English language. He has five poetry collections in Bengali. His English poetry collections include Silent Steps, Living Inside and Tidal Interlude. and five POD books published from USA. Anthology appearances (among others) includes National Treasures, Indus Valley, A posy of poesy, Concerto, Poet’s paradise, My dazzling Bards, The Silence within, East Lit, Indo-Australian Anthology, The Dance of the Peacock, Illuminations. His works have featured in journals Indian Literature, Taj Mahal Review, CLRI, Haiku Journal and electronic publications Arts and Letters, Eastlit, Tuck Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Peregrine Muse, Dead Snake, Underground Window, Muse India, Poetry Stop, Setu, Debug. He has jointly edited the anthology Scaling Heights. He was recipient of ‘Poet of the Year’ Award, 2015 by Destiny Poets’ International Community of Poets, Wakefield, U.K.

Setu Anniversary, June 2017