Laksmisree Banerjee (Women and Spring)

Laksmisree Banerjee

THE ETERNAL

(“Beauty is Truth, truth beauty / That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know”.. John Keats) 

I see my pictures often frozen in time

Perhaps I see art of the highest kind

Sometimes in reverie, sometimes in revelry

Ancient land with new grass

No crinkles, no wrinkles, just straight

Everlasting twinkles of the human mind

Fertile furrows, secure burrows 

Vitalized with pure soil and water

As I traverse on terrain endless

My heart of love and face

Struck in deep somnolence

As whirling times unwind

In the penumbra of the sun

In the silence of the void

In the milky gurgles of the child

A white blossom of fire unfolds

Breathes still in a moving circle

As I remain etched in stasis

Rocks and ages roll on 

Glaciers clot and thaw unyielding

Stars blaze and planets rotate

But I remain a changeless marvel

An eternal figurine of beauty and truth

In the cosmic mime ---

***

BEYOND THE APPARENT

When Spring unbars my doors and windows

when sunshine-gold flatters my face

with the ever new flush of iridescent purity

when the koel’s sonata cascades through me

in echoes of that effervescence of your love

the bursting blooms bathe me in beauty

of child-like liquescence in joyous gurgles

with their rainbow-blush of everlastingness

when cold nights have disappeared

into black holes of insignificance

when the raging firewood has left behind

the warmth of newness in its death

I hear your Cosmic Song in twittering swallows

ragas resonate in happy dancing of corn blades

Your Rhapsody of Life our only bewildering reality

And Death an aberration, a non-existence

A Temporal Winter of no consequence ---

Yes your amorous Springtime ushers in

an azure of hope with expansive virgin clouds

floating in ballads and ballets of limitlessness

full of expectation of water-bearing maternity

to drench lands and loams of arid melancholy

a far cry of wintry deserts from this season of joy

flossy cotton balls lingering in our sky of faith

making Springtime a playful duality of the sun

in tangerine delight with cleanse of rainy showers

proclaiming the balance of being in temperance

the parks and gardens full of the life force of equivalence

with your cosmic cycles of rejuvenation in hibernation

bliss and beatitude surmounting impermanent gloom

Your Spring remains our water-fount in crevices

Playing forever hide and seek at our doorstep

Yet presiding over mire and mist

Truthful Season secreted in the human heart and soul

Ready to lend the hand of lasting Divine Grace

A chirping bird of Timelessness beyond the apparent face ---

***

ARRIVAL

my dreams float in windy seas

my bare branches in rugged dance

my skeletal twigs born in the stress of freeze

jubilant now with whispers in the breeze

of your long awaited arrival ---

my green arteries now seeped in brown

my leaves turning limp, sallow, rusty yellow

my branches dry with no flow of fresh blood

awaiting the crescendo to seize the flood

of the moment of your arrival ---

sudden the cosmic harmony reverberates

birds, buds and bees agog with echoes

of the silence of oncoming rhapsodies

brilliance of a new season of symphonies

oh I hear the moment of your arrival ---

mother and child in the cantata of raptures

birthing leaves and babies in fluent green

kaleidoscopes in giggling gardens captured

rainbows in muted sunshine of overtures

blossoms await the moment of your arrival ---

the icicles thaw with another resurrection

songs of nature rend the air and abode

the artist has splashed his colours again

I await once more your moment of arrival

for Spring has returned with hope of survival ---

***

ROSES ARISE (On a Painting by Edouard Manet)

You see through my translucence

My soul of watery innards

A green yearning for a palette

Of our special communion 

Rippling cascades of placidity

So often erased or neglected

In a niche of unnoticed beauty

That flies in the ether of love 

I come to you through eons fragile

In the air of my flagrant colours

Splashing like the currents on spring-shores

Perhaps its tranquillity on the horizon

I become an angel with winging roots

My hibernating self in liquidity

Splurging with elemental bliss of ditties

Flowers embracing foliage in our elysium

Rainbow hues in the sky of roses

Painted azure of the blooming garden

Refractions rising in my longing for you

In my art of white transcendence

***

Bio: Prof. Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee is a Multiple Award-Winning Poet /Author, Literary Critic, Educationist, Sr. Academic and Practicing Radio & TV Vocalist with several National and International Publications, Assignments & Awards to her credit. She is an Internationally recognized Poet, Senior Fulbright Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar, Asian Society Scholar and National Scholar from the Calcutta University, a UGC Post-Doctoral Research Awardee and Former Vice Chancellor & Pro Vice Chancellor of Kolhan University, Eastern India. As a University Professor of English & Cultural Studies, Dr. Banerjee has lectured and recited in premier Universities of the world.  She has Eleven Books of Indian-English Poetry (with Two more forthcoming) and more than a Hundred Academic Publications including Books & Research Papers in diverse areas of Literature and Culture. She is widely published and anthologized in innumerable Journals and Anthologies across the globe, for eg. in Wasafiri UK, Chicago Review, South Asian Review USA, Atunis Galactic Poetry (Brussels), Setu (Pittsburgh), SECL (Studies-Series in English & Comparative Literature published in Austria, Canada & Germany), Commonwealth Review UK & India, Journal of IACLALS(Commonwealth Literatures & Languages Studies) and many more.

Dr.Banerjee (her Home University being University of Calcutta) has taught in Global Universities of Florida, Maryland (College Park Campus), Georgia, Stockholm, Lund, Vaxjo, Sodertorn, Copenhagen, Aarhus, London, Luton, Stellenbosh, Capetown, Witwatersrand, Sorbonne, Cyprus, Singapore Management University, Beijing, Kunming etc .  

As a Sr. Grade Radio & TV Artiste (a Gold Medallist & First Class M. Muse from Prayag Sangeet Samiti Of Allahabad University) she has performed over Radio, TV and Stage Recitals of Hindustani Classical, Semi-Classical and varied genres of Indian Ethno Music across India and the globe. 

Among her several Awards, a few need special mention---- viz. she is the Recipient of Two International Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry & Literature ((i)Reuel International Lifetime Achievement & (ii) Literoma Laureate Lifetime Achievement) International Panorama Award for Poetry, Kala Ratnam Award, Asian Literary Society Women Achievers’ Award, Connoisseur of Literary Arts of Asia & Tunisia Award, Literoma Laureate Kriti Samman Award, Sahitya Akademi’s Avishkar Honour as “a Scholar-Artiste & Poet Musician”, the prestigious UGC Postdoctoral Research Award for her path-breaking Work on Comparative Studies of World Women Poets  and many other Awards over the years  An active Rotarian (Multiple Paul Harris Fellow), a Sr. Board Member of the University of Innsbruck, Austria and a Nominee of the Indian Rashtrapati on several Central University Boards, Dr. Banerjee is passionate about using the potency of her Pen and Voice for Social Transformations, International Peace & Good Will.

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Setu, March 2024