Poetry: Lopamudra Banerjee

Lopa Banerjee

Bowing 

[Written in response to Nobel Laureate of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore’s famous lines-‘let my crown languish in the dust of your feet, 'O let my pride be drowned in tears'] 

Bowing is an art

I didn’t have to learn,

Swept by the unfathomable tide.

I’ve been a minuscule drop,

A scar tissue of invisible pain,

An atomic dust moving in my own orbit,

Why then, was I fashioned thus,

A smorgasbord of incorrigible wants?

Picking up my pen in the dark,

Writing pithy stories with my inconsequential ink,

I have all my strength to wait, whisper and burn.

Truths burst open and walk in now and then,

But I am swept with the wind-drift, a dust speck

In the dark. What if my lacerated skin bleeds?

There, out in the open, they die of colossal wounds,

Giant, blackened tides blow away continents at a time.

Bowing is my art of a hummable melody,

As I lean over the yellowed, brittle pages

Of a musical bible, a final pledge and a demand

Before my habitual world, swollen with nothingness

Blurs as an inevitable finale in front of my surrendering eyes.

Bowing, the final song of renunciation

That my bard reminded me, when it rained,

And all mammoth desires melted, weather-washed, homeless.

“Amar matha noto kore daao he tomar charono dhoolaro pore.

Shokol ohonkar he amar dubaao chokhero jole."

Bend my proud, vain head in humility,

Let it melt with the dust of your holy feet.

O, let my pride be drowned in tears.

***

 

The Mermaid And Her One Night Beau

Far, far away at the terrain of the tidal uproar

Where the sea becomes the mermaid's one night beau,

Her stories slide and sway, swept up by the ruthless lyrical riot.

She knows the Phoenix will rise and fly around 

Only for a dreamy, unreal day.

Her love-words will fling from unforeseen crannies, 

unfolding their soft petals. 

But hey, the darkness of rooms, sterile, whispering, 

Is only a night drive away. 

And even if the rains explode with the sonata of the birds, 

It is only her heart's untamed orgasm

Which will shrink, dissolve in tea cups and unnamed sighs 

In a sheltered home the very next day. 

Mad, fraudulent, she dips her fingers in the sea's fervent womb

And the rain seeps into the moonbeams of her breasts. 

She knows her blood will soon ease into domestic broths and unwashed linen. 

While her footprints will die in the sand, and the sea.  

 ***

Green 

My grief is green with the scum of stories. 

I wish it would rise from the buoyant dark of my neck 

Like old, unfiltered bile,

Spread across my trails 

like liquid tales of desperation. 

But like a steady, insistent rhythm,

It stays on in my zillion caustic breaths,

The green settles in my poison-friendly throat 

And I sink, in daily dribbles, in the rubble of my chores. 

The green, they say, is the color of melancholy. 

Unanimously, they contend and I know

My skin peels itself, loosening over the edge. 

My melancholy stream dances within my rims and crests,

I am a mountain of cracked earth and raging silence 

Overlooking a green river where unseen fungi 

Of a warrior woman stretch across continents. 

*** 

Song of the Road

Note: Written on route Texas gulf coast while we were travelling to South Padre Islands in Texas, USA. 

My legs dangle in the car

In the seat, I settle, awkward

The jagged outlines of

the interstate and the green

On both sides lighting up

Like tattoos.

Bollywood Hindi refrains

Gyrating, recycled, served up

Like frothy, milky chai

in old, verdant train stations

remembered with a child’s eagerness.

In our mouths, between

Our silences outstretched

And our tongues sticking out

Parched, tame, scanning

The flatlands and the ripples

We seek out our

love song for the road,

The tangy, sour essence

of the small towns

That ebb and flow with

the shrill rain,

the murky flood waters,

The turmeric-stained sunlight

That we taste, bubbling,

resting on our backs.

The tires push down the

Buttery roads and I am

Wrapped in the childhood raincoat

Where the playlist

of the songs become

Promises, vows, stillness grasped.

In the mirror, strands of hair

Dance to the orchestra

Like pesky birds,

Grey, trampled, bronzed

With colors, behind a veil

Of shrinking, errant drapes.

The wind and the light outside

A thin stick of pungent smoke

I inhale like a stealthy lover

On our way back home.

Soon the roads, robust

Against our limp bodies

Will bend and waltz,

Tweak and twirl, to

the stairs leading home.

In the brown, saucy night sky

Our road songs,

ingrained, left behind,

will jump, float away

in scattered lines. 

***

All My Plain, Earthen Songs

All my plain, earthen songs

Crafted in the paraphernalia 

of today’s glittering pearls. 

Drifted by the wayward wind,

Peeling off, taking flight. 

I have floated like an autumn leaf

Between the luscious perimeter of continents. 

My eyes have taken refuge in the broken lyrics,

The exploding between terminals. 

Let me go haywire and torn, 

Sucking it all in, for I know

Tomorrow when I will be gone,

My crushed visage, burnt away 

Will be an urn of ashes, soaked

With the fire and earth 

Of these self-same songs.

***

---

Setu, March 2021