Poetry: Ranjana Sharan Sinha

A Day in July

On a murky morning
I stand in the mizzle
calling your name--
Shiva...Shiva...Shiva!
I seem to become
a voiceless body.

Dhatura, Angel's trumpet
grows and flowers
in the temple garden;
the bloom of Mogra
scatters moonshine
and exudes perfume.

Thouhgts come and crisscross
in quick succession
on an island of stranded time
in the quiet space of innermost caves:
The agonies and the ecstasies,
the aches and the joys!

Behind my visible frame
happiness seems to be fleeting,
while the shadows of sorrow stay:
They make me buckle
under the crushing weight.

Sad snd lonely,
l enter your shrine
and fall facedown
at your lotus feet
with a voice choked with
inarticulate agony.

Tears come
streaming down my face
kissing the marble.
No flowers,
No leaves,
No coconuts,
But an offering of
pure precious pearls
seemingly endless in flow!

A Pair of Jeans

In the deserts of his heart,
amid dumb sensitive
wheeling days and nights,
the man carries
the load of duality.

Tied to a mechanism
of colossal yoke,
burdened with a big family,
he seems to be lost in a maze of
'to be or not to be'!

A proletarian
clad in a pair of jeans
and a bright T- shirt,
he is more miserable
than a beggar--
He can't go begging!

A cup of tea and cheap biscuits
replace his meal:
The constant reducing contour
He conceals behind
A flashy garb.

I find his eyes fixed
on my bread to a beggar:
Oh, the two eyes
I Can't forget--
Helpless, hungry, humiliated!

Forms and  Faces

In the streets and alleys of time,
Meandering and labyrinthine,
I keep on turning the pages of life
Amid the peace and the strife.
Life, a vast anthology of poems
Written on my changing selves
Expressed through multiple metaphors--
Absolute,complex, conceptual, yes!
I feel the fragrance of the red roses:
The shivers and sparks caused by your kisses,
A beauteous bath in colours flaming,
A season of youth- growing, sizzling!
Soon the bright sun mellows out--
A temperate zone l find out:
The soft sun slants across my horizon
Wisdom and love flows in unison!
Now just a few poems more
On life's vast sea shore.
Autumn's appearance, winter waiting
No quivers between 'melting and freezing.'

Bio
Former professor in English at Shri Binzani City college, Nagpur(MH), lndia, Dr. Ranjana Sharan is a well- known voice in lndian Poetry in English.She has authored and published 05 books and 50 research papers and has received commendation from the former President of lndia A.P.J Abdul Kalam for her poem Mother Nature. Her poems, short stories, articles and research papers have been widely published in national and international anthologies, journals ,magazines, e-zines and archives. Recipient of many prestigious awards and honours for her outstanding contribution to literature, her poems have been published in Sahitya Akademi's Indian Literature.she writes in Hindi, too.

Setu, July 2018