Five Poems by Gopal Lahiri

 

Flame

 

 

One by one the candles are lighted 

the airs kick and shower. 

 

Old rocks break, they serve memory, 

hollowness is a closure. 

 

A body of sand, it takes me there 

before the final fade out. 

 

Hungry half-fed waves pound, then sleep, 

mellow sun flickers and soften. 

 

Making thirsty, the evening croons 

and trickles over my cheek. 

 

A sky-blue flame shines in each footfall, 

The music blows out. 

 

Arousing but not fulfilling, it quietens, 

my fingers etch stories in silence.

 

 

 

Music

 

 

Let there be a plot 

I am telling my brother 

 

But this is not a story 

this is not that kind of a story 

 

Who was my father 

Is now an easy chair 

 

Is no longer 

Is no longer there 

 

I was too late to save him 

I felt the pain 

 

There is always a slumber 

emotions- frozen, obscure. 

 

One breath then another 

can he be my equal music? 

 

Is that what he wishes me to do? 

I become pensive with no answer.

 

 

 

Rupnarayan

 

Today the sun is not bright, the daylight 

sieves through the crisscross of the bridge. 

 

A train runs through taking all the memories 

on my tongue. The hidden boats now anchor 

 

within my two eyes. The perfection, the cadence 

never cover my heart like it used to be. 

 

I find myself in an approved disarray, black  

and white, no truths on the either side of the 

 

riverbank. Bushes wave their hairbrushes in the 

afternoon breeze, wildflowers nod their heads. 

 

Rock- pigeons and cormorants are standing there 

forever on the distant mud flats and clay cups. 

 

Inside me a barren island is slowly emerging,  

Rupnarayan river embraces me before the sundown. 

 

*Rupnarayan River is in the eastern part of India

 

 

Geo-solutions

 

 

Think about a field geologist 

and maps, clinometer and hammer. 

 

He sprinkles molten magma on the 

shadows of granite gneiss mountain 

that grow long and 

open ancient earth’s chest that bends 

into a smooth curve. 

 

While the earth  

passing through episodes, 

when rocks crumble and give way  

to the shelter of the anticlines, 

the metapelites align themselves 

against the intrusion of grey granite. 

 

The ache of the secrets goes away. 

his heart is filled with clear answers. 

 

Winds blowing from the forest side 

fall on his arteries, 

he can now walk on the crenulations, 

on the deformations in easy steps. 

 

 

 

 

Sermon

 

 

In summer, I watch row houses with square windows, 

white hibiscus in the patio, 

hummingbirds dancing on the barbeque grill. 

 

In winter, we talk less than  

what we have discussed earlier, 

 

Silence grows on the bare branches. 

 

I take out my hand from my shirt pocket 

and spread the memories on the floor. 

 

I touch the wrinkles of my sleep that 

count ages and send me sermons every night. 

 

I just let them arrive. 

 

The strong wind lifts them up in the sky, 

someone will listen to them. 

 

I have nothing left to say now.

 

  

 

Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 31 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose are published across more than one hundred fifty journals and anthologies globally His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 16 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021. Recent Credits: One Art Journal, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Poetry Breakfast, Shot Glass Journal, MasticadoresUSA, Amythyst Review, Verse-Virtual Journal, Setu Journal, Kitaab Journal, International Times, Himalayan Diary, Dissident Voice, The Piker Press, Confluence, Literary Revelations, The Wise Owl Journal and elsewhere.