Voices Within: Moinak Dutta

Moinak Dutta is a published fiction writer, poet. He has got two fictions to his credit. ' Online@offline' and ' In search of la radice'. His third fiction will be coming out soon. Many of his poems and stories got published in national and international journals, magazines , dailies, webzines. He works as Executive Editor of a literary and art webzine ‘ The Kolkata Review’. Loves to do photography apart from listening to music and watching films and traveling.

The story of homecoming

After seven hundred and ninety four days

I would , when return from distant shores,

And knock at that door of yours

You would be suprised,

Never knowing would I come

So early,

But would I smile

Seeing that verandah,

That portico,

That vine growing like that one exact which had I found in Sicily once,

That red oleander tree just beside the entrance standing where

I had kissed you first time you I brought home,

After so many days,

Passing through desert sands,

Greenish blue seas,

Algae ridden forests,

Coming home is like coming to your bosom,

Warm, bearing scent of mildew and lavender.

Glowworms & other poems

Glowworms

-------------------

Dots of lights,

They come and settle before me

For moments

On leaves,

With their own dreams,

O how many times have I tried to decipher

What dreams they carry for ages,

Do they replicate those shiny stars twinkling faraway,

Do they celebrate ' long kiss good night' like I do every time I hang up

Conversing with my friend from the other side of the globe?

Dots of light,

Those glowworms,

They settle on my skin

Finding fragrance of forgotten jasmine,

I look at them with aweful respect,

They had sent dreams to all poets of the world,

Had not they?

-------------------------------------

A night with Rebati

------------------------------------

Not every one can spend a night with Rebati,

Being such an ephemeral being as she is,

She weaves folklore out of her songs,

Her voice carries that sparkle of mountain stream

Which a writer can only imagine and be blessed,

A sailor can find rhythm in her songs and rush his oar through the hungry tide,

A honey collector can find sting in her voice and live to bear that sweetness of pain,

Spending one night with Rebati

Is like going to the moon

And coming back again

Being drenched by silvery flakes.

Spending one night with Rebati

Is like drowning into several sleepless nights.

------------------------------

A letter to Robert Louis Stevenson

--------------------------------------------

Your's ' A child's garden of verses'

Is what am I born into,

You had been the Lamplighter of my soul,

You had taught me how the paleness crept like

A docile thief on my skin,

Making me whiter and greyer

As if covered by chimney soot;

Tomorrow would be another day,

Robert, you had taught me what I should disdain,

The lamplighter's job and that of a banker;

When I would be stronger, getting better of tuberculosis,

I would write perhaps another version of The lamplighter,

And that time, I would not spend a single word on my loneliness,

Instead I would write like a adult, without melancholy and love stricken anxiety.

Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019