Sharmila Ray is a poet and
non-fiction essayist, writing in English and anthologized and featured in India
and abroad. Her poems, short stories and non fictional essays have appeared in
various national and international magazines and journals. She is an Associate
Professor and Head of the Department of History at City College, Kolkata... She
has authored nine books of poetry. She conducted poetry workshops organized by
British Council, Poetry Society of India, Sahitya Akademi... She has been reading
her poems in India and abroad... Her poems have been translated into Hindi,
Bengali, Urdu, Slovene, Hebrew and Spanish. She has received award from Women’s Times and Green Tara
Initiatives for poetry (2018).
Dead Sea Scrolls
Secrets
freezed in the caves of Judea
in
windowless, airless, lightless hole,
they
claim’d it’s sacred, they claim’d it’s holy
the
arid desert air preserved it’s soul.
Papyrus,
parchment and bronze fragments
brought
together by the Essenes sect,
Hebrew,
Aramaic and Greek letterings
captured
memory in ancient text.
Hearts
lynched and battered skulls
the
stench of viscera in the dying sun,
remnants of dissent against Roman lords
and
the curious universe on the run.
Reduced
by time to forgotten scrolls
and
left alone to repose in past,
until
that day a shepherd discovered
those
mystical talismans of a time vast.
Stones of Gwalior
Fort
Once
here, the stones half defaced by lichen now,
were
witness to stories of death and resurrection.
Now
covered in darkness and tree roots, they are
drunk
with absence and shadows of transient things.
Assorted
storylines are embedded in their pores
awaiting
a perceptible traveler.
One
day, perhaps, the stones will speak
emerging
from bleeding night
luminous
with sprouted new leaves.
A Horse Idea, a
Zebra Idea or…
With
some surprise I witness the sound symbols taking form inside my head.
Thoughts
–rotating, circular like a carousel, ideas taking shape: a horse idea,
a
zebra idea or maybe some mythological
creatures such as dragons and unicorns…
Through
the befogged lens of my eyes I try to see inside the thoughts, misty like
unused windows.
They
move, swirl in vagueness lifting the veil and all of a sudden engulfing me.
The
horses and the zebras in the dissolving softness of expectation take me across
steppes and savannah to uncharted landscape waiting for a purple midnight.
There
they come face to face with unicorns and dragons smeared with glitters of a
lost world and
Bacchus playing with lions, their mane plaited
with vine leaves. Even Arjuna lays aside his Gandiva and inexhaustible quivers
to frolic with Artemis in the wildland.
The
sweet smell of burnt cedar branches make the air pleasantly
thick.
I
move upwards through my thought-pattern, sprawled like a net across my being,
slowly transforming into sun-bright spirals, leaving behind air grafted with a
ballad.
Open One Window
You
can close all the doors
but open only one window for me
before the self stops speaking
and
sounds do not resound anymore.
You, My Poem
Oh!
my poem I try to create you,
I
undo you, you who bring me sleep
and stories of Shangrila.
Vibrations
of love, unprecedented laceration
and childlike smile are there if I must have
you.
You,
my poem, your progressing hands rip open
everything
that I hide amongst layers of language
and
I at last sink through a hundred degrees
of words and metaphors.
Voices Within Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019
A poem that brings the Dead Scrolls into life, through the poet's sensitive journey back into the past through the Judean caves,where a Bedouin shepherd, hunting for a lost sheep in Qumaran is seen holding it in his hands.I could feel the smell of Papyrus that held the sacred Bible on its chest.The poem resembles a mystical talisman, an inscribed ring shining bright.
ReplyDelete-Satishchandran Matamp