Four Poems by Sarah Das Gupta

 

Puck, by any other name…

I answer to many names

Puck, Hobgoblin, Robin Goodfellow,

even foul fiend when Mistress

is truly vexed

by my mischievous tricks.

In the cool dairy, the milk turns sour;

hiding in the shadows,

I bewitch the butter churns.

At twilight, in the mothy gloom,

I pick fennel, parsley, thyme and

scatter the withering leaves,

confusing the kitchen scullion.

 

At harvest in the summer sun,

I creep into maidens’ bonnets

or in dusty barns, where motes

dance in rays of light,

I steal grain as the winnowers work.

In the mill stream I tangle

the fishing lines.

The rose- spotted trout escape

to cool green shallows.

 

In autumn, I sit on the horse’s back,

as he ploughs, turning the dark soil

into earthy waves.

I pull his ears so he tosses his head;

the ploughman loses his footing.

In midwinter, I polish the ice in the farmyard

as Mistress carries branches of red-berried holly

and dark- brooding ivy to bedeck the hall.

I fill lovers’ ears with tales of deceit

before sleeping in the breathy warmth

of the murmuring sheep fold.

 

 

Beware the Hare!

 

A snowy February day.

Two hares boxing, the bare starkness

of a blackthorn thicket.

Seen from the window of a train,

soon dismissed, forgotten.

 

A snowbound English village

in the year of Waterloo,

a hare seen: an omen

of defeat, of death, of disaster,

of a broken heart, of crop failure, of barren cattle.

 

Hares lived on the edge

of the spirit world.

Messengers, shapeshifters,

in that strange twilight between

the world we know and

the other.

 

Symbol of fertility, hermaphrodites,

hovering between male and female.

Familiars of witches who

changed to hare form

to drink the milk from neighbours’ cattle.

 

The split lip a sign of Satan,

a white hare, a broken- hearted,

double-crossed maiden, seeking

the death of a fickle wooer.

A solitary, often nocturnal creature.

 

A snowbound February day,

two hares boxing.

A spot of blood,

in a white wilderness

still haunts the memory.

 

 

It is dark here.                                             

 

I am running my fingers through the furred dust. Light, blind folded, cannot find the key. Now at last the smallest of chinks has appeared; the walls of the dam have been pierced. Flashes of torchlight in unpredictable sequence light up the mothy darkness. Exercise books, satchels, morning prayers. Music drifting across misty playing fields awakes the ear of the past. The dead feel their way through the dusk. They struggle for breath like desperate fish emptied from a creel on the cold quayside. My father in his old mac is ploughing the twenty-acre field. The rich earth turns, noisy sea gulls form a foaming wake above the dark waves.  My husband is listening to Bach. As the violin soars unbearably, he wipes away a tear. Now the far horizon is fading. Now it’s no more than a faintly pencilled line, the very edge of memory.

 

 

Midsummer 1595 (Prose poem)

 

On village greens, dancers weave magical patterns of coloured ribbons round leafy green poles. Through summer meadows, processions of villagers wind their way to bless the fields.

Wicked, destructive devils and hobgoblins are banished. Green men, swathed in ferns, promise a good harvest. Bonfires, started with charred wood from the last Midsummer, burn and flicker. The smoke, like incense, blows over cattle and crops. Blazing fire wheels are rolled downhill. Spring, summer, autumn, winter are bound within the flaming wheel. So, the Sun traces its yearly course through the heavens.

On cottage doors, wreathes of bright green birch and fiery flowers, miniature suns, are hanging. Trefoil, with its three leaves of the Trinity and yellow St John’s Wort, are being woven into these wreathes. Midsummer is the Feast of St John, the Baptist, the red flecks on the petals, symbols of his martyrdom. The wreathes are left to dry in the Sun.

Between dusk and dawn, the veil between mortals and spirits is lowered. Witches collect herbs, now at their Midsummer best, for mixing their powders and potions. Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, a mischievous sprite, turns milk sour and disturbs the dreams of lovers. River nymphs ride on the backs of water boatmen. Queen Mab drives her tiny coach over unsuspecting dreamers.

At Midsummer, all is possible!

 

1595 date of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

 

 

Sarah Das Gupta is a retired English teacher from Cambridge, UK. She has taught in India, Tanzania and UK; Her work has been published in over forty magazines and journals in US, UK, Canada, India, Nigeria, Croatia and Mauritius. She is interested in Art, History, Nature, the Environment and Politics.