Five Poems By Gopal Lahiri

 1

Ninai Fall

Even in my sleep, the world comes after me.

It offers me some precious hours, or sometimes

a small hint of understanding.

Sometimes I dream that everything in this world

is here; under the open sky, named and orderly,

I am the person down on my knees.

I close my eyes, I hear above me, a rapid sound,

I look above; it is a flock of beautiful hornbills

I feel something wonderful touches me.

Ninai fall is a narrow stream of water falling

of from the rugged volcanic rock bodies

I hold my breath to stop time.

Loving this stream, this plants and shrubs, this fall

I want to leave this place with only the winsome

earth in my heart.

*Ninia fall is located in South Gujarat

2

Anaphora

My morning is my grandmaother’s

age-old Tulsi plants.

My morning is the charcoal shadows

of the greedy crows.

My morning is the memory of rain

in thinnest trickle of water.

My morning is the cycle bell of the

tall newspaper man.

My morning is searching the blue

combs in the ragpicker’s hair.

My morning is the unsolved binominal

equation.

My morning is when we are not

competing with each other.

3

Contrast

1.

I inhale the galaxies

asking for light,

asking for flame.

I hold my nerves

They send me a bowl of fireflies.

2.

I speak too soon

I get carried away easily.

They come shaking all over, crying,

they smell of burnt skin and bone,

I paint the wall- a water lily pond in it.

4

Pastiche

Sometimes I sit for hours, watch stars

scratch garbled scripts.

The spider’s web on the night lamp

sways in the breeze.

One branch of a Neem tree touches the window

sill, behind the hedge there is a sleeping dog.

Cigarette smokes turn coils, a sudden silence,

the flowers are yellowed in the pot.

Long distance trains’ whirr stops abruptly

I hear rain, a nightbird calls.

There are things not in the picture,

a line of leaves above a door dries up.

Darkness is a soft touch; I hide my poems

in an envelope of stone.

5

Earth Prism

In a season of scarcity and its blank spaces

where will the sleepless birds go for brief respite?

Heat wave in cold region and the forest fire

where the eyes foreshadow the way uncertainty,

It’s faintly dark, it’s night, yet the trees are burning

like a restive soul in triangles of colour

Stars are red-eyed tonight, planets ambers, asking

for new names for old galaxies and constellations.

You weave a new night map, throw inner space

around it from that pure abundance in you,

It has no limits for the discerning night birds

and turns out to be a fascinating prism.

Birds and bees now write letters to the new gods,

new angels; bringing back our green earth.

*

Painting: Rafi Haque