Two Poems by Mandira Mitra Chakraborty

Mandira Mitra Chakraborty is a poet who engages with life in its different hues! She ruminates over nature’s moods in winter, taking lessons, learning to appreciate small things for the joy and brightness they bring to life! Using images that paint winter in its mists with the sun, magpie and sleeping dog, she travels inward where she finds warmth even in the flame of a candle! Mandira versifies death as a mirror that teaches how to live, comparing this profound knowledge to ‘October’ that arrived early on, as spring! The image of a dying animal is juxtaposed with the transient beauty of the shimmery wings of a dragonfly symbolising life!

1. November

Now dusk comes swiftly

Like a long-tailed magpie

Sailing down a cedar

Raised to the evening sky.

A light chill sets in the air

At dawn, sparrows feed

On the first sun

Winter glides over the vast

City in a mist, dogs

Curl in sleep.

I have learnt to feed on the little–

Small mercies, small kindnesses

Small loves. Nothing worked

In my life till I gave up the

Grandeur of the vast–

Lofty dreams, sky scraping desires

The idea of one devastating love.

Now I sprinkle a pinch of salt

On my life, take small bites

My tongue yearns

My soul burns

I warm my hands on a candle flame

How small the fire

How bright the light.

2. Lessons in October

My grandmother always said

You have never lived at all unless

You’ve watched an old animal die.

Breath skimming over the surface of life–

Green dragonfly skimming

Over a gurgling stream

Shimmery wings making rainbows

In the light.

Those caskets of flesh,

Your lungs

Sifting air

Working against time

A pair of bulls yoked together

Digging through the raw cathedral of desire.

Very early in my life

It was always October.

Always an old animal dying

And a young animal watching to learn

How to live.

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