ANIK SAMANTA

ANIK SAMANTA

.

Elegy

Only an angel can witness

A tree's silent sorrow

A silence that merges

Into the silent sky

A clean slate clear of the inscriptions

Of love and war

Yet the clouds gather

Bringing rain to sublunary sufferers

For who amongst us can surrender our hearts

To the swallows' wings?

Dew gathers on the virgin rose

--scarlet with untold passion--

Like the teardrops of a dead sun

And silence grows over our words

--unwieldy--untold--

Like moss over abandoned paths

As the night-river floods mirror sleep

Blue

Blood awash with blue

Your eyes are blue

The sky--just before it falls asleep--

Is blue

The world--this dreaming drifting world--is a billow

Of blue

Your eyes are blue

Your eyes are bright blue

Bright blossoming blue

And now the dream drifts in

Lifting--here and there--now and then--the veil

Off this little lurching life

A world roseate ripe resplendent

Billow upon billow

Of blood-borne blue

And blue

And blue

Canzone Pietra Dura

In the four chambers of my heart

A petrous archipelago

Forming your image

In fragments aflame

Graven in the depths of a dark dream

Blood distils the dream

And makes the flesh palpate--flint-like

Your marble mould has made of my world a monolith

My possessed breath hews the heavens

To salvage

A sign

Heaving with the perdurable pulse of a possessed face of passion-splintered rock

ANIK SAMANTA

ANIK SAMANTA was born in 1983 and read English at Jadavpur University, where he is currently pursuing PhD. He is an Assistant Professor in English under the West Bengal Higher Education Service, currently posted at Govt. General Degree College Salboni, Paschim Medinipur. His book of poems Wordfall was published by Nandimukh Samsad in 2018. Apart from poetry his interests are Western classical music and photography. He can be reached at samanta.anik@gmail.com