Sekhar Banerjee: Poetry (Voices Within 2021)

Sekhar Banerjee is an author. He has four poetry collections and a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. Sekhar’s works have been published in The Bitter Oleander, Indian Literature, Kitaab, Muse India, Ink Sweat and Tears, Setu, Panoply, Bengaluru Review, Mad Swirl, Cafe Dissensus, Borderless Journal, RIC Journal, Spillwords, Mad in Asia Pacific, Dissident Voice and elsewhere. He is a former Secretary of Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi under Government of West Bengal. He lives in Kolkata, India.

 X 

You wake up early in the morning to count 

the number of common crows 

on messy tram wires near 

Ezra Street west; they sit like an assembly or a conference 

or an urgent municipal meeting 

and you try to make a guess at the spread 

of love and sickness 

Does an even number of crows signify

something adequate like a happy couple or two symmetrical sides

of a closed gate? 

Is odd more public than private? 

You don’t know if you can break this sequence 

of symmetry and oddness 

and you start comparing yourself

with a leap year – a shortage, 

without reaching out to any conclusion 

about those things 

which we generally term ‘X` 

while masked lovers and astrologers freely roam

in odd and even numbers 

with brittle goldfish jars – a jar, a fish, a loss 

in Calcutta – the old lunch box

***

A Moth’s Itinerary 

Sometimes you may find 

an Atlas moth trapped like an outdated longing 

in the maroon underground coach 

running fast towards Clarke Quay 

and you instantly know you are going 

to Dhoby Ghaut. The moth might also be going

to Dhoby Ghaut or returning from Punggol 

or Australia

like a somnambulist. It walks around Bugis 

in June or roams in the Arab Street 

in spring

They are not like the domestic bees and I don’t know 

much about a moth’s itinerary 

or how it travels from one place to another place,

from one hotel room to another 

hotel room, one continent to another continent

like a tired migrant in search of

sleep

But it always remains to be seen 

if we see them returning 

more often than not from their endless trips, as if, 

to know that there is someone somewhere 

still waiting 

***

Augustine  

I have christened my backpack Augustine

He sits all day long, 

almost in squatting position, on my back

We harvested enough lullabies, circuses

and death in our backpack 

since the ancient luggage makers discovered

Augustine on our shoulders 

in a prehistoric dawn 

when our nightmares and dreams leaked 

from our sleep and formed Augustine 

on our back 

like any other small thing that holds the large –

like a small photograph 

of a large mountain, or an epitaph

---

Life, Cognition and Creativity 2021 :: Setu, January 2021