Poetry: Jaydeep Sarangi

Jaydeep Sarangi

1. Soul Spaces

Over my piercing eyes silence 

is called for, again and again

Talking to you is my act of silence 

dancing near the old river connect at Jhargram

I celebrate my daughter's feats everyday

taking a special biryani for home

As the summer rain sails over me

my desire makes me of its own

The silent waters of the Ganges

carrying the light of my silent eyes

Delayed is my mind’s full moon,

someone calls me to meet in deep dark 

Darkness has a voice, mysterious caller tones 

You call; my desire has an evening, our moods mate 

A long day signs off waiting for your 

mood to return and celebrate the best in the world

Unbound from cultural images, meetings

her free spirit with a trident and a sword

Bright blue, standing on Shiva she 

keeps time, the dark mother of the land

As she moves in deep water of life 

my heart is taken on loan, undefined. 

***

2. The Random Moments

(For Jayanta Mahapatra)

My poems stand in front of your floral gate

Interfaced with green hopes, crow noises 

before the wearying banks of the Mahanadi

I leave my rivulets, metaphors behind

passing through a rain of rites of the moment 

with a slow soundless night at Cuttack.

The Hirakund Dam is never dry of hope

the substance stirs my grandfather’s heart 

hanging over an ancient city of temples and kings.

As an obscure man I ask for more words

out of hunger or a summer smiting times 

looking out for some drops of holy rain water

My brown flesh is a missing person 

with bare face relationships 

lying down with wounds leaking blood

Tonight, I 'm beside the chariot and a lion sitting,

counting shadow spaces at Chandrabhaga beach

without talking to it, my random descent begins.

Life signs are white bones of the past.

If I suddenly lose all doors of paper

how can I talk to a God?

***

Bio: Jaydeep Sarangi is a widely anthologised poet with ten collections, latest being, letters in lower case (2022). He is the President, Guild of Indian English Writers, Editors and Critics (GIEWEC) and Vice President, EC, Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library,Kolkata. He has been dubbed as ‘the bard of Dulung’ for his poems on the rivulet Dulung and people who reside on its banks. Sarangi is Principal at New Alipore College, Kolkata. He edits Teesta, a journal devoted poetry and poetry criticism. With Rob Harle he has edited six anthologies of poems from Australia and India which are a great literary link between the nations. Website is : https://jaydeepsarangi.in/

---

Setu, April 2023