AMANITA SEN

 

 

The Dream Sequence

 

You watch the news half-attentively

much like you watch the scoreboard

 

when your favorite team seems to lose—

only this time, you are in Noah’s Ark,

 

with your species, and the storm is

intimidating—indiscriminately so.

 

And now you are in a dream sequence,

in a film where the cretin-sprayed migrants keep

 

crouching; they walk endlessly,

trying to avoid staggering to death itself.

 

And even in this dream, you do not miss

the joy and the sprint in the name Jamlo,

 

a befitting name for a wide-eyed preteen,

whose identity as a child laborer you wish

 

to sweep under the carpet—but cannot.

You keep wondering: how could anyone with

 

as joyous a name as Jamlo give in—die of hunger?

You wait eagerly for the director to say, “Cut!”

 

Walking On The Cliff

 

If you are walking

on the edge

in your dreams too,

 

if at any moment

you know you could fall

with a thud, rudely

 

awakened from sleep—

what should you do

in that half-dazed state

 

Do you keep going

along the cliff, like the mule

carrying you on the hill-mall?

 

Do you disembark midway,

dismissive of it all—

what is it, after all,

but a mere dream?

 

Or do you cling to the last

glimpses, for it is worth dreaming

this nail-biting, edgy dream?

 

AMANITA SEN

 

AMANITA SEN is a poet, translator, and critic, with three volumes of poetry in English to her credit. She has written scripts for three short films that have been screened at various festivals. She practices in the field of mental health and lives in Kolkata.