Ballari Sen, is a bilingual
poet, critic, and a researcher working on various cultural and literary
influences on Portuguese- Bangla interface since 2012. She has been the recipient
of the prestigious KRITTIBAAS award in 2010, for her book ‘Bihaan Raater
Bandish’. Her doctoral thesis is based on changes in perspective of masculinity
in contemporary Bangla Poetry from 1970 to 2000. Her first published English
anthology The Window Seller gave way to new avenues in 2013 to experiment more
with forms and signs we voyage in recent cyber spaces. She has been a guest of
honour in the Dhaka Literary Fest as a poet and panelist last year. Being a
lecturer by profession, she teaches Bangla bhasha –sahitya in Gokhale Memorial
Girls’ College, Kolkata.
On Her Blindness
It was hell already. The rubble clasped
between my breasts
There was no land, no bit of word to
decipher. My stubborn alley of
The last digits only spell numbers.22. I never
knew he was so young as to be
My son, the chasing wrath of a male animal
was a lavender scent below his collars.
I swiped across, my lips slowly on a deep
nocturnal anchorage spreading our childhood
Into a magic foliage. It was like
forgetting how we used to see each other without a single
Glance. It was like pushing my gold
frankincense within an abyss called a vagina.
Not a word to disperse. Eyes crossing over
noses, calendars gambling with past, no ancestors
No myth to conquer, it was me who pierced.
And it was him who shrouded me, naked in
ecstasy as if
Stars shooting with light. We left us to
make ourselves born.
The Gift of The Magi
And then said Jocasta
Fears are nothing but sins, sins are lost worlds and we are
whores
But you, the handsome and courageous, each grain of salt
On your forehead is divine, each
little spasm of your wound is a destiny
the witches taste. I lie still as
an embryo inside the womb of an ethereal
Mother as I see your frown caress
a frolic in mine, aloof on the pillow my tears
Wrap a canopy of human warmth. I
long for the night once more, no matter
How much the owls screech in
disgrace.
The road closed in a mystic
stupor of blood and nectar, Jocasta
Thy supper is venom, thy name is
undone.
The Bridge of Sigh
Below the bridge of sigh, a tiny blind
lane to Ashmolean, he rubbed his
Moustache with a darkness of soiled
napkins, where tears were studded
Like crimson dots in a harvest moon. I
watched his summer lips curve into
The queen’s lane, his fingers still
clasped in mine. It was a setting sun late this
Evening as drops of red wine poured from a
long-neck bottle; we walked brisk
Through a cobbled road downhill gamboling
with the last impulses of radiance.
Leaves of a chestnut followed and red
poppies nodded in mirth; yay! At last he
Closed my lids to the dark. At last,
petals closing to a mystic halt, a pathos of
sorrow lying in between, I sought your face,
heavy like a Nazi gambler, in a
dish filled with avocado memories and a
moonlight sonata.
Lost Memory Cloud
Gathering ink tools which were conservative
and gender- biased
It was he who picked up silence as a
sea-shell weaved with sclerenchyma
I had no doubt it was a misnomer. He
handed over the thread of pearls in our maiden
Acquaintance, saying a cozy hello with
fingers clasped in mine, as we stooped to a halt.
Lines punctuating to a blind-lane, neither
of us touched to smell the frantic pulse
The sunlit playground, our colony club, kabaddi
on a saraswati puja sneaked in.
No little full stop, his hair curled to a
topography unknown, this was a blurred cell
Therapy.
You silenced me to a new nail polish,
washed my feet with your hair, scented my bathwater
Put a vanilla drop, caressed my glasses,
rubbed them as if my cheeks were red, blushing
It was you, a lost sea- shell coming back
to me, sailing with wings like a blue green ladybird,
Evolving each moment to oblivion.
Starbucks,
from 1971.
Not a word to decipher
But each movement of his eyes were a
phenomenon
White half sleeves tucked in, his forehead
was a shy chrysanthemum aloof and weird
He never tried a glance.
And now, each dot was a moving echo, we
were yet to learn sounds winding
To unlived youth, the togetherness, coffee
with cream.
Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019
