Four poems by Jaydeep Sarangi

Jaydeep Sarangi

1.  Varanasi
 
In a living interface voice from the remote past
messages are tall shadows.
Life moves on like before people
standing, sitting, chanting
 
 walking and preparing for the prayer meets
beside an ancient river of faith.
 
Saffron clad sages chant for peace,
Higher order flowing in a vessel of light.
Home for all who have no
homes to go, no links to live.
 
Only prayers exist for ages--
are a window, hope of a river flowing
carrying the heart of a nation
living and longing, faithfully
holding the world hard …
***

2. Sleep-habit
 
Hold me to your spaces
not as s a tourist
to ancient stones and pebbles.
Memories of silence is a habit 
with the heart of a plundered acre of green.
Water underneath is a lover
waiting for a full moon. My desire
is a magic box you keep open at night.
 
I stand among these ruins
of my silent prayers and passages.
This sweet sleep is needed for dreams
where you hold me tight, through this door
I never experimented in relationships.
 
Tell me your good name. Make me
your own before I go to a sleep-habit.
***


3. Love No More

Love lost is nothing new in the world.
It has a natural fall; a delayed rise somewhere.
Day by day with patience rolling,
Busy at the spinning-wheel, Love breaks
Hearts, I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened, nothing will happen tomorrow.
Love no more is a piercing idiom to crack
Beyond a shining Sun in another hemisphere.
***


4. The Renaissance Man
(For Kapil Dev Nikhanj) 
 
That doesn’t always happen
I still sleep inside a miracle of my childish dreams
I feel the journey of sunshine, blistering strangeness.
Through him, the nation has a new birth.
The coffers are off. He is on field.
Conflicts end in desire of another meeting
Love is a movement within, panting for more, and more
No one can deny tomorrow’s sun rising
Who can stop the spring blooming hard and fair?
 
Indian Mothers have one large womb
care giving is rebuilding the face of mothers,
frontline warriors save mangroves, mothers.
Granite minded batsman saves his wicket
against late out swingers and lethal bouncers
Batting bulldozers must play well
The straight ones, Kalidasa to Shakespeare
all want home crowd cheering, green bonds.
 
I fight back my disbelief
calling it by familiar names
What a man! How can he
take such an on filed catch-winning
a match? Who can fool Alan Border
so many times, playing in his turf?
How can a mother give birth to a maestro?
Who can finish everything and any thing
at wonders, desires and hopes of the nation?
 
I keep describing his features before my daughter--
a flower is what we get, Nataraja pulls to the boundaries
smashing Marshall, Willis, Underwood and Headley.
A man my country needed, prayed for,
a renaissance man, a fearless artist with bat and ball.

---

Setu, May 2024