Two Poems by Subhransu Maitra

1

Materiality of My Room

Life passes like a dream.

Nothing is left behind. Death, too,

dies a natural death. So,

in the spacious living present

I walk through the old living room

or potter around, go out on the balcony,

pause, come back through the room

and arrive in the parlour for

a cup of tea or the newspaper, may be,

going about my day and thus

erecting yet another scaffolding,

morning noon afternoon evening.

In the evening I sit in the room reading

or sit before the laptop to read or write

or draw the chair across and sit out

in the balcony to see

evening-brimmed saplings in little pots.

I do not pause, though,

before the wardrobe mirror.

I quietly dodge all needs to open the wardrobe

where still hang your old and new saris

elegantly folded as if you’d finished

rearranging the contents in your deft style

only a short while ago.

 2 

To a Pariah Kite

 Though in us, around us

Terrors are singing all’s well

with the world,

and though you are a bird of prey,

a carrion bird, a gross bundle

of flesh blood instinct,

your harsh coarse shrill trill

and screamsongs,

being unlettered primitive call,

triumphant, unchained to

meanings known,

sail spontaneous past rain clouds,

supple sunlit blue or

toxic greyness

into the artifice of cosmic Dhwani to thrill,

when you call from deep inside your

majestic earthy insouciance,

our mangled shrinking sense

of old joy.

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