Five Sonnets by Shamik Banerjee

In Autumn

It's autumn and my spirit is reborn

Like Dahlias that bloom in orange shades;

My heart is cheerful, so this lovely morn

I'll take my steps towards the olden glades

Where once I held my Amber's silken palm

And spoke those words a lover longs to say,

And sauntered by the bluebells sweet and calm

Like freeborn clouds that drifted by that day.

Three years have flown by since she found a place

Amid the realm of God, beside His eyes;

I've never missed this date since then to trace

This spot of our love's tale. Love never dies;

It lives for me among these silent leas

And in our symbols chiselled on the trees.

 

 

On My Disappointment From a Surmise

At her smile's marvel, I was so congealed

That though she was in happening company,

I reckoned that her truth she could not see

And raised my pen whilst hoping thence to yield

A verse and thereby have this truth revealed

To her: the swanlike eyeful that was she;

For I had neither charm nor majesty

And knowing nothing else could be my shield,

I wished to send it forth with this surmise

That she would read it and herself adore

And maybe if fortuity favoured more,

My admiration for her realize;

Until I noticed that her very smile

Was for another's passion all the while.

 

 

A Dissociation

Two comrades of a common provenance,

The soul, had one task: Yahweh's truth for man.

The former, Rapture, had a blazing stance;

The latter, Peace, was somewhat mild and wan.

If one transpired, the other rushed as well.

The ancient monks knew it in their dark caves

And He appeared to them in bush or swell;

But when beguiling Flesh discharged its waves,

Poor Rapture found its water sweet and clean;

Entranced by it, he went towards its bend;

Peace deemed it brackish, tried to contravene,

Reached out his hand but could not save his friend.

Now one is found in mankind's fleeting role,

The other is asleep within his soul.

 

 

Gulmarg Valley

Boon brought me here among your meadows green

O' Gulmarg Valley; little I have seen

In human world, a province so pristine—

Now such a realm is true before my eyes;

Acquaint me with your firs, the grainlands wide,

The span-new bloom, parterres, the riverside;

If you become my dwelling, friend and guide,

I'll be relieved from world's discordant cries.

Though one may claim: for true peace of the heart,

The Maker should be sought and not His art,

Then why did He create your placid height

Where eremites reside to feel His light?

For fleshly eyes would not see Him, He knew,

So kept for us, His godlike mark in you.

 

 

If I Consider Winter as My Foe

If I consider Winter as my foe,

Whose swordlike chill has rendered me unwell,

Declined our paddy's health, its yieldly flow

And turned our home to one cold hoary cell;

This judgement, then, will be against the Lord

For He who blew this chill, brought Summer too

Last June, did fields of teeming rice afford

And fill our home with light and bloom anew.

But if I think of regions where the Sun

Remains throughout the year with ruthless blaze,

The natives there who wish its stay was done,

Beseech the Lord to grant them frosty days.

Hence, though we both, plead Him, for easeful lives,

What I deem branches, to him, can be knives.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India.