Special Edition: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

1. GREY YEARNING

Out of the box the universe lives with me

A reality more mesmerizing

than a dream- sparkle---

Encased in my glassy shell

an intangibility hard to trespass

I see soaring innocence

Yearning hands of prayer

Upward motions of sacredness and desire

Children seeking eternity

With peals of laughter

Fragrant whorls of incense

Moving upwards to touch

The azure bending to kiss---

Dry twigs have undergone

Transcreation of souls

Now nascent and pure in

The play of outstretched baby hands of jubilation

Soon they will break the boundaries

When limitless space will bring harvests of corn

Dense foliage will spread velvet verdure

The rejoicing children of multihues will giggle

The walls and fences will fall apart

And the land, sky and sea converse in untarnished mirth----

I know for sure the rains will come soon

The drenched empyrean will mingle with the children

In a new age of noble youthfulness

And I will break open my glass cage

To ballet with the mellow sun-soaked showers

To let my heart sing till infinity

Songs of the good earth

And let baby leaves and grass grow in abundance---

***

2. HOPE

we live in huts and hovels

across that untouchable horizon

fences are redundant with

windy gusts of remorse

awaiting spring

the pathways to our cubby holes

have clusters of half-axed trees

forming a community of minimalism

bare landscapes revel in bonhomie

shrubs and bristles along highways

hug, stretch and hanker for company

for that greenery of kind socialism

for that foliage of untarnished love

the parched earth wails with moist tenderness

as brittle twigs lie with still to be born babies

the cloudless skies celebrate life in death

with the arrival of watery whirlwinds

a patient watch proclaims sudden silence

of the mortuary wrapped in brown about to rise

a coffin cloth of cruelty is a sign of

plundering as the grey sky relents

that jaundiced orb in the sky proclaims

rejuvenation with a fast approaching festival

Of awakening....

***

3. BEAUTY OF TRUTH

This day benediction is a far cry

scrambles through light and shade

The skeletal limbs outcry

In tired movements

Stretched beyond

The invisible horizon

Blazing with love and hate----

Here is a slivered world

Days like nights of gold and silver

Sun masquerading half- nude

As the amorous moon

Scrawls across in perfidy

With aridity sucking out life

In shrivelled fog of dusty skies----

The barricades harsh still

Assert their supremacy

Though hills and greens

Herald with thrills from afar

The egg in the sky drips

With hope of better days

Echoing still the beauty of truth---

Oval pallid may perhaps turn vermillion

As dreams of love swim to soothe zillions!!

***

Bio: Laksmisree Banerjee is a Multiple-Award winning Poet, University Professor of English and Cultural Studies, International Scholar and a Vocalist. Widely published and anthologized she has Twelve Books of Poetry and several research cum academic publications. She believes in the potency of her Pen and Voice for Socio-Cultural Transformations.

---

Setu, May 2025

Poems by Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

 

                           The Phoenix and Cacti

(In memory of a Corporate Fire Tragedy in 1989 causing a lifetime Injury to the Poet)

 

Survival is a gruelling task

when severely injured through

cruel negligence of another

 

One more day of their heat-eyes

standing erect as a black reminder

afflicting me into perpetuity

 

Their glare a spike in my flesh

though they often conspire

against my pulpy softness

 

I manage to return the spike

with struggling deliberation

against destiny and the doers

 

Their eulogies, emptiness, flowers

Explode into envious slips of flame

ignited callously at my back

 

Pushing them into some unknown

judgement day I am sure of

yet my injuries remain irrevocable

 

On that haunting day of hailing the Visionary

with unforgettable cramping memories

of arrogant pomp with no vision or piety

 

Their incendiary pavilion full of

meteor-eyes fuming as if to

have me burnt to ashes

 

When the flames ate my flesh and silk

someone enthused with callousness

“but isn’t she scarred beyond recognition?”

 

That day I garnered my realization

from the ruins of reality

from the cinders of cruelty

 

The fire tearing at my spirit and body

writhed upwards and inwards

like a hungry, lascivious female ---

 

My arms and soul outstretched

an umbrella hard to open

to save my only fledgling

 

Times have gone by since that inferno

but I have risen with the rainbows

in rain and sunshine from the ashes

 

A tigress or a phoenix I do not know

never debilitated nor sunk

yet unable to cremate

 

The charred corpses still deep inside

bristles over-crowding within

a tangled forest of cacti---

                                          REPAIRING A BURNT BODY

 

The doctors saw my body,

scarred, naked

and shamelessly identifiable

 

The scorched moon dying

with the shrinking sun

in my blood

 

My splintered self

breaking under the scalpel

with my simmering corpuscles

 

A lump of flesh examined

closely by burns specialists

while I made my consciousness

and awakening

wait outside ---

 

The body had to revive

and the spirit to die

with wilful erasure

 

Though I never allowed

the hard rocks in me

to ever wane or dissolve

 

Photographs of my

snake-skin grafts

 

helped Dr. Bhargava

to fetch his degree

Masters or Doctoral

in the skilled art

of redeeming

burnt bodies

 

I wailed in searing agony

with outstretched, dishevelled limbs

 

While he pulled out my bandages

to snap-shoot my bleeding wounds

     BOUQUET OF FLINTS

 

     My body feels like a grave

      With sprouting flowers

Adorning its lovely crafted facade

      My mind a lonely peak

Free and breezy at the summit

      In its dizzy stance of

World-watching in aftermath

      Defying the storm.

 

The cinders inside have

      Caused efflorescence, transformed into

Endless contentment of victory

      And forced tumescence

At having known and conquered it all.

 

I have learnt to walk on burning coals

      And feel yet the icy cool,

The balmy wind playing on my face

      And the slag of black pains

Which I have waded across

      Gathering still in memory

The aromatic white sprinkles

      Of the springtime grounds.

 

I have faced it, fought it,

      Learnt to accept the scars

Of hidden illness as trophies

      To make my bouquet

Of flints and sparks of victory.

                   

Now I see

      A scintillating, slim ray

Across an endless foliage

      Perhaps my fractured sun

Will rise yet again

      From the violent billows

And touch me with his baby-pink

      Soft incandescence

To light my thorn-ridden path

     Perhaps, perhaps someday ---

                                                                             ***

---

Setu, February 2025

Poetry: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

WOMAN

I am a Woman, an amazing tree of life

a stunning follicle of immensity

fruit, flower and foliage of being and unbeing

of all that breathes inside and outside---

I am a Woman of wise wistfulness

a re- building after all erosion and sighs

the rage and calm of the flowing river

a ravage and rubble of the hibernating seed---

I am a Woman born in the eye of a storm

a cardinal rib that protects your soul

a tingle of ebullience in ruddy tears

invincible joy breaking open claws of grief---

I am a Woman of a continuity unstoppable

despite all lies I enrich with truth of knowledge

I rise to kiss the stars and delve into the deep

I remain the womb, the cell and over- arching pulsation---

I am a Woman holding the enormity of life

It is hard to read the riddles I clasp

for I am your genesis, your love and hate forever

your creation and annihilation ín dawn and dusk.

***

ONCE AGAIN OUR LOST VOICE

Once again the roaring wind

brushes, lashes past shoulders

dishevelled peoples and races

annihilation more fierce

more disruptive than ever before

raising fears and slogans

against the green and blue

confused and segmented

against all free unfurling

all curbed to nought once again---

 

Once again the lost ballot

weird thoughts and heresies

against liberal words and acts

against brotherhood

nothing, just nothing

but the forecast of

decrepitude of tears

the ravage of power

denudation of unsuspecting

loves and lives---

There you go once again

as you knowingly trump

as you dump, as you bump

as you stoke the fire and pump

to make more hate-zones

and fences with bristles

clamp and stop the onward going

all understanding spilt in murk

as divisive authority reigns again

as humanity stares a dumb onlooker

once again our lost voice

once again, once again.

***

---

Setu, December 2024

The Artistry of Patchwork Quilts

Deepa Agarwal

 

Dust-Decked Rainbow Quilts

By Laksmisree Banerjee. Penprints Publishers, Kolkata, 2023. Pages 103; ISBN: 978-819667772. Price ₹ 250, $30

 

Review by: Deepa Agarwal

 

Dust-Decked Rainbow Quilts—an intriguing title for a poetry collection, yet so apt for eminent academic and poet Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee’s latest offering.

 

I had the pleasure of reviewing Laksmisree’s earlier collection The Blue Phoenix and Other Poems some time ago and thus have some familiarity with the poet’s compelling inner world.

In her preface she provides the explanation a reader might seek for the title. Referring to her perspective both as humanist and womanist she states: “the metaphor of the “Quilt” has been deliberately used from the usage or context of Feminist Historiography in which the artistry of embroidered or patchwork quilts or crocheted bedspreads, made by Women across ages and geo-spaces, becomes the archetypal crux of Women’s Stories.”

The term “dust decked” itself offers a clue to her unique and skilful handling of language that the reader will encounter over and over again in this collection. The distinctive prism of her imagination throws up many such phrases that have an enduring resonance. It is indeed a mark of the poet’s calibre that she negotiates the maze of poetic language with such a practised felicity. We rarely think of dust as something ornamental and this rare juxtaposition evokes both the past and the beauty of oft ignored, rarely appreciated toil of women.

 

the trapped sunshine of hues sprinkle all over

from the riotous tints of bygone ages

embroidered coverlets of centuries

of female trajectories buried from sight

or their parallel humans in subaltern blight

of captive lives emitting culture- soaked light

    to illumine our lucent todays

The poet uses a familiar device—invoking the past to find meaning in the present but her singular vision sketches a pattern that is her own inimitable creation. The same unusual use of language adds a particular luminosity to the poem “People’s Poet Jayanta Mahapatra: in Fond Memory” in which she pays homage to the iconic poet who left us so recently.

the calm of your cherry pain

leavening our shredded soul

your wincing butterflies wing

    through our ambrosial manna

These are indeed words replete with multilayered meaning.

The themes of Banerjee’s poetry are wide ranging. However, certain tropes become evident as you examine the poems deeply. Her “womanist” concerns come across strongly in poems like “Silent Scream” and “Object D’Art”. The plight of women who have no control over their lives is expressed in stark unsparing terms in the former:

 

Worship, immersion, festivity, facades

all drown fading into memories and births

of generations of women with silent screams

    dying every instant with their fortitude of dreams

The objectification of women is set forth in “Object D’Art” in intense and graphic language, where the newly wed is portrayed as a puppet whose role has been predetermined by others.

She was reconstructed

with finery, jewellery

a good status-symbol

    for private use and public display---

While poems like these may decry the ways of patriarchy, she also finds joy in man-woman relationships. In the poem “Love Marriage” she uninhibitedly celebrates the union of two bodies and the overall tone is one of hope.

 

we have pilfered time for loving each other

in the surge of the storm wheezing past

    the turbulence of deep silent permeation

 

“Rivers Meet” similarly reads like an ode to love, though its mood is somewhat melancholy as it dwells on the tenuousness of human relationships.

Her humanist side and her social consciousness are evident in poems like “On A Greyhound from London To Northampton”, which is a scathing commentary on racism when a white bus driver brutally forces some coloured passengers off a bus.

 

That was an eye-opening day though

with squally skies and a blurred vision

when the cosmic lights went off

darkness prevailed more within

than in the arrogant winds outside,

the usual crowd of white predominance

with a minuscule of blacks and browns,

a thick smoke of supremacy clogged

    the free flowing air with spurts in frowns  

 

“Siachen (To the Unknown Soldier)” dwells upon the plight of those anonymous guardians of our frontiers with deep empathy.

 

On the highest battlefield of this cold-hot world

we are the ones who script forgotten, illegible history

sing unsung heroic songs of bravery often erased

we the ones who dance in the silence of doom

we live and die in anonymity, in glory gone silly

give up lives, families for our national family

     still we remain ever decided sentinels of freedom ---

 

Banerjee paints vivid mindscapes with great energy.  The brilliant colours that ornament her poetry—coral and azure, indigo and sapphire add a particular radiance to her verses. While her poetic pallete is incandescent with colour, she adeptly brings a chiaroscuro of darkness and light into play as well, which adds another dimension to her poetry. The five elements—earth, air, fire, space and water are also evoked to convey poetic meaning as in the poems “Rain Rhapsody”, which plays joyful tribute to nature’s healing power:

 

Look Mommy, the rains have created magic

Clumps glossy plumaged

I see these silver slivers

Lancing the earth playfully

With so much tender chuckle

Slanted splinters of watery crackers

Implosions of sky and earth

 

This multi-dimensional poetic sensibility can be experienced in several other poems as she presents a variety of points of view to illuminate different facets of meaning. Indeed, Banerjee’s poetic voice is almost like a clarion call alerting the reader to possibilities that might have escaped their notice. She is all heart and spirit and her passion for life and living is vividly evident as she negotiates the high and low notes of language with consummate skill. The poem “Chance Meeting” reads like an affirmation of faith. After beginning with the traumatic scene “where mutinous mobs ran, at each other’s throats”, in the end there is exuberant celebration:

God reappeared in the skies blessing me

As I cried in joy, my hands stretched upward

“Yes I have found him—I have found my answer

It is love, love, the endless River of Life”--

 

Thus, while she bewails the imperfection of human existence and throws merciless lights on the dark fissures in our society, she also soothes us with a ray of hope, a belief in the essential goodness of humanity. To quote from her poem “Game of Numbers”:

 

So the gaming sprints through time and space

Yet humanity lone belongs to another race

A wholesome knit of goodness breed

     As we reap the verdure from that seed---

 

It is impossible to do justice to this vast patchwork quilt of Banerjee’s poetry in this short piece. All I can say in closing is that the diligent reader will reap much verdure from this poetic seed.

***

---

Setu, July 2024

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.

---

Setu, March 2024

GANDHI (Gandhian Philosophy)

Laksmisree Banerjee

GANDHI AT THE CROSS ROADS

He grew and grew like a huge banyan

With taut roots, a leafy shade

for us to sit under and introspect.

But now he stands at the crossroads

spectacled in stone, all alone  

in dimness of truth and

Iconic distance in the webs of history.

The vendor still fights under the sun 

bent under the load of his wares

  the slum dweller droops in death

the capitalist still swoons in exultant

  vulgarity with his Gandhi-stamped currency

bought from the sweat and blood

of the down-and-outs while

the demagogues shout “non-violence”

to garner votes for everlasting power.

The Mahatma in his statuesque immobility

carved in rocky apathy

at the traffic signal, stares silently

at the quagmire of life.

GANDHI’S TRICOLOUR

The tri-colour flutters 

In the immanence of 

His pure white peace,

In his loin-cloth of sacrifice

In the saffron greenery

Of his miraculous sainthood

He lives with countless age 

In the void of truth

Ageless in thoughts

Unyielding in acts

Born to create a nation

From a ravaged race

  Gandhi’s tri-colour flies high

Against our stars and skies

But freedom has acquired a new meaning  

As brothers kill brothers 

And the beggar woman with an empty bowl

And a weeping child unfed in her arms

Sits just below the pedestal

Of Gandhi’s dust-worn statue--- 

 GANDHI: AN ENIGMA

  From his piano lessons

  To his waltz classes

From the ignominy of 

  His South-African train journey

To his legal battles

  From his impassioned satyagraha

To his relentless charkha,

  He remained 

In continued exile

  From himself

An enigma testing truth

 An example to the world 

Breathing in ceaseless quest 

  Till his final moments

Offered him in agony

  The much sought-after stasis

The sureness of glory

  The permanence of fatherhood

In the romantic haze, though

  Of our failing memory---

GANDHI: THE FATHER

 

His first-born looked for the father

But never really could find him

His wife remained loving and loyal

But never really could touch him

They strove, they struggled, wept

A suffering family orphaned by

His daunting limitlessness

He remained a sacrificial demigod  

Blind to the narrowness of everyday lives

To the petty joys and sorrows

Of all near and dear ones

He tried hard to build 

A nascent democracy

From the nadir of imperialism

 To light up a new dawn of truth

He fought with his untold weapon

  He faltered, he split, he wept

  He was rent apart, cut open,

Partitioned and killed 

  

But he ascended while he fell

Invincible through triumph and defeat--- 

 

 A TRYST WITH HUMANITY 

 The whirligig of truth blossomed ever

  In his lotus frenzy of boundless love

The baby rays of the sun in

His vision beyond the blue

Gleamed in the shimmer of his glasses

His fathomless eyes moist with life

Caressed the dewdrops on

The green blades of open fields

His resonant prayers

Awakened living fires in 

Tired minds and ragged lives

While cooling riotous souls

His walking stick of resolve

With the sureness of treading

Defeated insurgencies and

Strangled empire

In a chequered life incredible

Till the bewildering crescendo

Of a gunshot penetrated 

Deep into his bleeding heart of humanity--- 

LIVING NON-VIOLENCE

The elevator took me high up

To the Top of Africa building

In Johannesburg where I heaved with pride

In Gandhi’s Satyagraha Museum

A communion with ether and manna

An ineffable joy I always felt in zest

Across times and spaces strewn with

Gandhian gems of thought and action 

In squares, roads, jails, shrines, offices

Men transcending Power for Peace

Expansive iridescence in Gandhi’s aura 

His far reaching embrace of land and sky

Firm onward movement

Fortitude of fragility

Austerity beyond reason

Ideals beyond comprehension

A shining minuscule of wonder 

Born to carve a world of Non-violence

Are we prepared now for the Gandhian Illumination?

Or do we await a Nuclear Armageddon? 

  

Bio: Prof. Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee is a Multi-Award Winning Global Poet/ Writer, Educationist, Vocalist, Former Vice Chancellor and University Professor of English and Cultural Studies. An International Senior Fulbright and Commonwealth Scholar, widely published and anthologized, a UGC Postdoctoral Research Awardee and felicitated by the Sahitya Akademi, as “a Scholar-Artiste Poet-Musician”, she has served as the Indian President’s Nominee on Boards of Central Universities. She has Ten Books of Poetry and more than a hundred Academic Publications including Books. A Two time Entrant to the Yearbook of Indian English Poetry, Dr. Banerjee believes in the potency of her Pen and Voice to impact Social Change.

---

Setu, October 2023 :: Gandhian Philosophy

Laksmisree Banerjee (Towards Visibility)

Laksmisree Banerjee

ON THE OTHER SIDE

Stars lie buried in the sunshine

A revolve, a light, a darkness there

As my six becomes your nine

Beyond this there lies another sphere ---

The glow worms flying minuscules

Diadems of fire unawares

Spreading light in dotted capsules ---

As night tiptoes from the other side

The moon in shimmer also arrives

Day or night, nothing absolute abides---

My sun is your moon and stars

Your sun is my stars and moon

Will you look beyond your own swoon?

Can you ever see the whole rainbow?

Except the arched one so seasonal

Many harvests from many seeds phenomenal ---

The horizon makes the day meet night

My smiles hope not of your blight

My love or tears still not in your sight ---

Look the other side and this side too

As the twilight weds the seas and skies

Truth dawns and so does night ---

When was the part not a whole

Or the whole not a part?

Perspectives split can still merge ---

Look how the ring side

Is in sync with the other side

Look how the dark embraces light

With empathy and delight ---

***

I GROW IN DEATH

you split my tongue

you slit my throat

you slash my wings

you axe my foliage

you drink me dry ---

my silence is your delusion

my voicelessness

embers of my soul in rage

my body a cemetery

of speaking ashes in full bloom

you smell the purgatorial ambrosia

of my daring incensed fragrance ---

from Egypt to Indonesia

from Amazon to America

from Somalia to India

from England to Kenya

my trails of travails at home and abroad

make me red, green and pure gold

I revel in my firewood-pain

a ruptured spirit ever unfurling

my gullet cut resonates endlessly

a croaking frog dancing in the rain ---

my split tongue now

breeds poison of enchantment

the serpent of your creation

enamoring so many of you

perhaps a snapdragon ready to eat

a rose reincarnated as a gobbling cactus

spiky, unforgiving, a twisted cobra

sculpted through tyranny ---

as you cut so I grow

more you suck more I flow

you make me bleed

a river of the cold billows

my life eternal in death

as my skeletal branches flail

they splice you

lacerate you ---

I rise in my new vision

you fall in your remorseless illusion

my living death now my azure

I am the bird of love

a snake in the sky ---

***

SILENT SCREAM

Her scream has travelled long

through the hollows of ages

in the silence of whispering dogmas

A playful child she was at nine

with peals of laughter

enlivening her pink cheeks

Her dimples gleeful with her

clinking glass bangles holding

lovingly her slender wrists

The crackling jungles dim

the blossoming trees and foliage

all in sync with her quiet cries

While the foreboding heaved

deep within her childish bosom

with screams throttled by tradition

Soon her glass bangles broke

brittle like her silent crying heart

her whole self-enchained in gold

The young bride pushed into

an alien household with her wails

in subterranean folds of her trousseau

An under creeper wrenched out of

her soil for painful transplantation

her shrieks now deep as the ocean

No dearth of kith and kin or friends

no dearth of relationships half baked

in-laws, children, grand children

Her lord in sunny glory of triumph revamping her

Through decades, she in seeming command

as the screams pierce deeper into her loam

She remains forever the forgotten trophy

now a sudden horizontal marble white

the grand matriarch dressed up again

Her final journey as lavish, pallid and ashen

as that first one with gleams and screams

she the Ma Durga and her carcass floating now

Worship, immersion, festivity, facades

all drown fading into memories and births

of generations of women with silent screams

dying every instant with her fortitude of dreams

***

Prof. Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee is a Multiple Award-Winning Poet /Author, Literary Critic, Educationist, Editor and Practicing Radio & TV Vocalist with several National and International Publications, Assignments & Awards to her credit. She is an International Senior Fulbright Scholar, Commonwealth 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 Nine Books of Poetry (with Two more forthcoming) and One Hundred Twenty Academic Publications including Books. Among her several Awards, a few need special mention---- viz. she is the Recipient of Two International Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Art & Literature, International Panorama Award for Poetry, Kala Ratnam Award, Asian Literary Society Women Achievers’ Award, Connoisseur of Literary Arts of Asia & Tunisia Award, Literoma Laureate Award for Lifetime Achievement, Sahitya Akademi’s Avishkar Award 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) and a Former 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 and International Peace/Good.

---

Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

Poetry: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

EARTH DAY

I am Gaia, your Mother Earth

My greens golds, blues, pure chroma

Sustain your bewildered life

Your darkness throttles me

Your jigsaws pierce me 

Will you never end this strife?

I birthed you as you bloomed

I wrapped you in my lovelorn folds

You breathed in my watery placenta

You danced along my ripples

You lived cosily in my moulds

You ate, drank, slept, rose in songs

All in my silken wreathed sheath

In my shimmering grassy gold ---

You flew from azure to ether

Rejuvenated in my milk and water

Built your castles in airy space

All because I gave you home

And hearth to land here and stay ---

And now you ransack my plenitude

Ravage my gracious wealth and beatitude

Make my loving loam a wilderness

I am almost a weeping bald pate now

Shrivelled and withered living anyhow

Grown old well before my years

My ambrosia now a living hell

You make me limp with your Power-spell

Change before you hear your death knell

Every day is your Mother Earth Day

Preserve my bounty for you to live and stay!

***

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-totting 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, June 2023