Five Poems by Ajanta Paul

 

Earth

 

Earth,

 

smelling of rain

and clouds from faraway lands

 

trailing diaphanous diaries

of monsoon, miasma and mist,

 

dispersing into the dank subsoil,

their fetid freight of fears,

 

sifting anguished aquifers

springs welling with tears,

 

the thud of clod on coffin

dull sound of finality.

 

Earth,

 

is soil with its bustling banter

between microbes and minerals,

 

red, black, white and brown, bits of bodies,

organic residue mingled in pain,

 

the anthropomorphic angina

of heartland in agony,

 

carrying in its veins

the susurration of streams

 

and the smell of crushed stone

in hushed geological gossip.

 

Earth,

 

which can revive

only if the world recedes

 

topography held in tension

by coordinates that conspire

 

to map a memory, clear

as a festival morning, sheer

 

in the sunshine of simple faith

reimagining abundance in loam,

 

resisting alluvial angst

to redeem a lost kingdom.

 

Earth

 

is that ubiquitous powder, dust,

ground in the whetstone of time's lust

 

flying in the face of glory

challenging life to retain its superiority,

 

the gritty, grainy, grimy destiny

of statues and men alike,

 

its dancing motes scripting

an ephemeral, shifting story

 

belying its stable inevitability

as our eventual, collective history.

Origami of Outfits

 

I fashioned a new me,

folding osteoarthritic limbs

like stiff paper on a cut-out

 

in the origami of outfits

that informs the sartorial saga

of this poor show.

 

The brace will embrace

the recrafted warrior 

come to life in a new dress,

 

armour for battle stress

in the fight for existence,

shield protecting my brittle ribs,

 

artfully concealing the little fibs

with which I try to beguile my wits,

essentially, a cage enclosing another,

 

a straight jacket, rather,

designed to uphold the tired torso

in a relentless reinforcement

 

of metal, thread and cloth

valiantly striving to ward off

the inevitable rust and moth.

 

The belt around the waist

is not Hippolyta's girdle

seized by Hercules to overcome his hurdle

 

but an orthopaedic reminder, 

of the decadal calendar

and its toll on the skeleton of truth.

 

It's age's appendage, geriatric adage, 

a caring clasp, firm with advice sage,

to help one get through the day

 

by keeping the lower vertebrae

in their appointed places,

lest they droop or bend

 

or, in any way descend

in the general degeneration of things,

and thus the rules offend.

 

I wonder, would the cervical collar

have helped Atlas bear better

the weight of the world on his rugged shoulders?

 

As long as thoughts defy

The general decline

And refuse to calcify

 

There will be hope and dream

Behind those eyes sanguine,

Resisting the rigours of rheum.

 

No Return

 

When the soul splits

Like the sole of your shoe,

And yawns with every step,

 

The tongue hanging out

Yapping its frustration

On the hard pavement,

 

Echoing amidst the sounds

Of a city going to sleep

In the cold clasp of winter,

 

The trundle of the last bus,

Dogs barking in nights of nowhere,

The crunch of twigs beneath tired feet

 

You feel all the words

Have been said, promises unmade,

And signs read.

 

The last mile left to be trod

Blurs into milestones

Like crosses in a war cemetery,

 

Pale and white in the rain

The wood whittled down

To a sparseness sadly eloquent

 

Of names on a plaque,

At once anonymous and intimate

In their mingling of life and death.

Mirror

 

Everywhere I turn

there are shining surfaces,

from moon reflecting sun

 

to window pane

refracting afternoon sheen,

before which schoolgirls

 

pause and preen,

self-consciously tucking in

a stray strand of hair,

 

the glass on the trial room wall

in the multifarious mall

confusing with a profusion of options,

 

Eden before the Fall

pure and natural,

wrapped in a luminous shawl,

 

the lens of levity, stretching

in a series of distorted images

in the circus tent of life,

 

the rear view mirror

crowded with traffic

in memory's thoroughfare.

 

There's no respite

from the looking glass,

and its likenesses

 

at every bend and turn

invariably surrounding one,

beyond and within,

 

the brilliant crystal sphere

glinting with glimpses

of a revolving future,

 

the prism of the past

catching through its facets

vibrant vistas and vignettes

 

along with promise unfulfilled

sparkling like a teardrop

in the eye of fate.

Face

 

He had seen her somewhere,

on the fringe of a crowd

in the cusp of ages,

 

at the edge of memory,

in a reflection on water

wavering and splintering,

 

heard her in a tune haunting the mind,

the echo of an elusive strain,

wafting the eternal question,

 

had felt her as design melting into other designs,

forever forging new connections

in the ever-expanding web of signs,

 

like the face that people see, or think they see

in a tangle of branches, or clouds,

or cracks in an old wall,

 

in anything at all,

when they're not really looking

for it, or anything in particular,

 

and it insinuates itself

into their vision, only they can see it

at that time and place

 

that sudden leaping configuration

trembling with imminent dissolution,

created by things, random.

 

Dr. Ajanta Paul is an academic from Kolkata, India who writes poetry, short stories and literary criticism. She has published in literary journals including Spadina Literary Review, The Pangolin Review, The Piker Press, Shot Glass Journal, Poetic Sun, The Wild Word, Capella, The Punch Magazine and The Bombay Review. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2020. Ajanta published a collection of short stories The Elixir Maker and Other Stories in 2019(http://www.amazon.in/dp/B07N42KG1Q?ref=myi_title_dp) and a book of poetic plays The Journey Eternal in 2013 (https://publications.salesiancollege.net/publications/books/a-journey-eternal-poems-plays/)