Four Poems by Dr Anushna Biswas

LIFE OF SISSYPHUS

Life a long hard journey

Work and labour

For handful of payment

We get wood of broken drawer

Pierced our soul

Heart curved

Being in pain

No stopping though

Soul cramped

For a bash to escape

 

Bits of wood

Carved our soul believing in no destiny

got punished

For defying set system

Me prepared to confront

Hidden faith kept as mechanism.

 

 

LIGHT WOMEN EXUDE

You are my Ophelia’s insight

You are my Cordelia’s enemy

You are my Marina’s sorrow

You are my Desdemona’s trust

 

You are my Urvashi’s dancing art

You are my Asia’s power

You are my Miranda’s crystals

You are my Portia’s intelligence

 

You are my earth’s mercy

This is our existential legacy.

 

 

VICE STRIKES THRICE

Vice strikes thrice

Wine, women, gambling

These are like climes

Once caught up in vice

You have to pay big price

Thus time glides into cries

Taking pound of flesh

Life’s gloomy race

 

Vice strikes thrice

And more times

Modern times freeze like mimes

Thus family sinks

Members of society sink

In hellish day rink

 

No solace enough to wipe it

Men caught in vice

Ask for respite thrice

But being too late

Sympathizers can’t alter fate

 

Seen life turns cloudy

and unseen.

 

 

THE WAY I AM

I am a woman

I am hope

I am desire

I am loser

I am winner

I am sin

I am sinner

I am purgation

I am catharsis

I am preserver

I am destroyer

I am creator

I am power

I am friend

I am enemy

I am sister

I am sister

I am brother

I am lover

I am nature

I am wife

I am mother

I am storm

I am lashing rain

I am rainbow

I am seven colours

I am dawn

I am sunset

I am evening

I am dark night

I am nightmare

I am saviour

I am a hustler

I am insane

I am wise

I am repressed

I am freedom

I am untouchable

I am world

I am sky

I am universe

I am infinite

I am fin-de-siecle

I am “Golden Millennium.”

Dr Anushna Biswas is a Literary Critic, Poet and Feature Writer of The Indian Express Group of Newspapers. Also, a former Lecturer and head of the Department of English at Tagore University Distance Education. She has published eight books of literary criticism and contributed essays and articles in The Indian Express Group of Newspapers.