Poetry: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

DEAR WOMAN

Dear Woman,

we hang from the boughs of

the same tree of un-tasted succulence

along zig-zag tracks of unknown tangles

as the bride-calling Bird

awakens me mellifluously

in my bridal attire and bower

entangled in the breeze of 

fully unfulfilled dreams ---

enmeshed in the strains of 

long-lasting lost desires

of dense forests

long before we knew each other 

as sisters in no man’s land

or perhaps long before

we danced hand in hand in no woman’s land,

brewing in interludes of scorching coffee breaks

myself already poisoned by 

the fruit of knowledge

still clinging to our age-old Elysium

beyond its gates of banishment ---

the golden clouds have long ago

melted into the delirium

of the darkness of nocturnal trees,

much before you ripened into

the fallen mango 

splattered on ground                                                          

its putrid juice of unrequited love

I lived through this long story of survival

much before you my dear sister,

I knew the silken reverie

we have always woven

to play our roles wrapped around

in our dead silk worms

still emitting glow in living deaths ---

I hemmed into my life of

history’s blank pages with

bitter sweetness

a frolicsome masquerade,

now flooding across with

cascades of tearful amnesia

perhaps much before you,

perhaps much later than her ---

but now, like you, I have found myself,

lived in alien lands as my own,

sprouting with new leaves

in painful transplantation,

geo-spaces and temporality,

rivers, rocks and seas

now bland in the sameness

of dark and light,

dear sister we are very much alike

in our vain equipoise of    

a suave, customary compromise ---                                      

yes we are now united and ignited

in self-discovery of our own paradise regained                                 

in our belligerent making,

in eons of undeterred womanhood

sculpted in artistry through hammer and anvil,

as wisely beautiful as the singing river

breaking its way through stones into the sea,

drenched in dreams yet not soggy ---

you and I the sturdy, all-encompassing banyan tree

not seeking but giving shade

as strong as the earth

as omniscient as the ether

as inflamed as the fire

as inspired as the wind

as amorous as desire

as fierce as the hurricane

as soft as blooming love

as liberal as the sky ---

We celebrate here and now

our womanhood timeless,

our hot-springs welling out

of the flinty no man’s land,

our greenery peeping out of crevices

of jagged elemental rocks,

we have made our quilts, woven our yarns

to clothe the dark secrets of the world ---

Now we stand together

bare, unfurled

at the still point of history ---

***

FOR MY DAUGHTER

I made a doll of the passing day

to gift it to my girl the other day ---

I made her braids with the tangled green

of dense embracing rain forests ---

I made the lilting streams wrap around her

liquid feminine beauty of allurement ---

I made the moonlight her satin golden skin

I made the candy floss clouds her bright smile ---

I made the rainbow her glistening raiment

I made the starry skies her sequined veil ---

I made the blossoming garden her coronet of flowers

I made the empyrean her illimitable world of dreams ---

I made the sun glow to bedeck her fairy forehead

At last I gave this doll to my blissful girl

To make our instant of love Eternity.

***

GUNS IN GARDENS

Ah can you not hear the hoarse cries of 

the approaching torpedo?

The suppressed grunting of the angry thunder?

The incinerating rage of the lightning 

in blossoming gardens?

Can you not see the outstretched arms

of wailing green branches

Reaching out to the school-bagged, uniformed children

Walking side by side for their morning 

prayers in classrooms?

Those that you push into battle gear

with hazardous guns

Those that wallow in fury

of uncontrolled angst

You convert schools into war zones

splattered with soft cherry blood

Lobbies steeped in crime and greed

for arming children with guns of death

Rather than books of life?

O you creed of super-powerdom

May you become one of peace and love

To sustain the whiteness of your doves ---

Inhuman hate-clad hubris in loose strings

Spectral terror of the darkest purple clouds

Floating above in aimless dislocation

Rudderless un-reigned juvenile wrath

In the clutches of gun-toting monstrosity

In zones of misplaced machoism

From Texas to California

From Florida to New York

To usurped unloved reckless wrath

As forests and multihued rainbows weep

Shedding blood and tears in mutilation

In a land of unabated guns of annihilation

Shattering ceaselessly tender leaves

Of blooming buds in disarray

Nettled in thorny fogs of unwashed simplicity

Prodded in disenchantment to kill and shatter

Beauty of tumescent new lives ---

Ah the dissolved souls and fainted cries

The muted reverberations die across the ocean

As life becomes a toy of unbridled cruelty

Smothered forever in silence

In the precincts of innocence ---

***

DEAR MY FRIEND

Dear Friend ---

have you ever seen

those mushroom clouds

mirrored in the graphics

of moist eyes?

have you ever seen

blood splattered tomatoes

spilling, spouting in agony

gurgling out of 

puny wrenched bellies

of gunned down

erased innocence?

have you ever seen

those naïve moths deluded

in cavernous delight, dying

in their vain search for light?

have you ever seen

body-bags of unsuspecting bravery

flung out of hospitals and frontlines

thrown into riverine ashes?

have you ever seen

that dreary, desperate haze

of shattering shells

in bombed towns and villages?

have you ever seen

the musk rose wilted

torn and grounded

stamped dead under

the boots of cannon-cruelty?

have you ever seen

peoples, dogs, rats running

helter skelter

scrambling for life and shelter

in misty fields of smoking uranium 

alive still in death?

have you ever seen

that dying child gasping

in the lap of a dying mother

begging for life in the detritus

for the alms and arms

of some unknown god?

have you ever seen

a burnt body, a burnt mind

a scorched young soul

in the embrace of 

a wailing woman in wilderness?

No my dear friend

you have never seen these scenes

even in dreams ---

life has so eluded you

that you still breathe in masked sheen

in lounges, parlours, conditioned salons

drawing rooms of endless babble

and gibberish, glitzy gossip

as life passes you by covertly

with padded paws

as love leaves you forever in the lurch

and fervent humanity slips away

in all its scented miasma

through the ornate hour glass

in evasion and treachery

in the gaudy darkness you chose

till the last explosion!

***

---

Setu, January 2023