GOPAL LAHIRI

 

Long Walk

 

The windows are green, the field outside is greener still

I take long walks among the trees.

 

Late summer, the light is fading.

 

There is no wind. Grey is the air and

it will not smell my anxieties, my fear.

 

Their voices are changing, night’s

eyes softened by the lamp lights

 

Hands and faces unload pain and wounds

spread themselves, small fire in the fireplace.

 

Long intervals of silence, listless questions

unanswered. Blank pages overturn unwritten words

 

The sky is still far away from my bed

feeling departs, all your smiles funnel into laughter

 

Silence again, multiplied, immaculate drawings

on the wall, some sense of irreverence comes through.

©gopallahiri

 

Grain Inside

 

Sometimes I look at the morning sky, look not listen to,

I am the entire sky in a grain,

feel the day may shrink inside me like a particle.

 

Clouds know many metaphors, skies alphabets,

black birds find home in the pencil sketch,

sometimes in oblique brushstroke.

 

I always wish to be on a boat to watch

the bending of the river on a canyon wall,

etching new conversations on the rock surface.

 

Memories lift the finer threads and throw outside,

old stories clog my toes, legs are still like wood pieces

sound of wind is rising in octave and then closing in.

 

I have seen when I wait long enough

the whispers brush the ceiling and drop back intact.

My hands are frozen shadows in the fading light.

 

It is all shaken up when I have lost all direction

in my dream. New thoughts now sense

 a different body, a changed reality perhaps.

©gopallahiri

 

 

Doors Left Open

 

A night thickens in my eyes

Sterile winds roll over the roof

A dense fog slithers out of the forest.

 

The full moon on the courtyard, is it the

Palette or brushstroke?

 

The sound of banging windows by the northern wind

Rustling leaves fall off, driven away,

 

The sea of sunflowers radiating, freezing light

 

Am I the fragrance, the grasshoppers’ wings?

 

This shifting, this changing, these altering,

How hushed they are, how soft and seductive,

The blurred edges draw border line.

 

Trapped in the net of memory,

I lose my way again and again.

©gopallahiri

 

GOPAL LAHIRI

 

GOPAL LAHIRI is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 27 books (17 in English and 10 in Bengali) published, including eight jointly edited books. His poetry in English and Bengali, is also published across various anthologies as well as in eminent journals of India and abroad. His English poems are translated in 16 languages and his works are published in 12 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize, US for poetry in 2021. He is the recipient of the Poet of the Year Award in Destiny Poets, UK, 2016, Setu Excellence Award, 2020, Pittsburgh, US and Indology Life-Time Achievement award, West Bengal, India. His latest collection of poems ‘Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets.’ has received wide acclaim. He has recently edited an anthology of poems ‘Voices Within’, published by Setu publications, US and two other jointly edited anthologies, ‘Home’ and ‘Poetry Conclave Yearbook, 2021’.