SREYASH SARKAR - POEMS

Sreyash Sarkar is a poet, a qualified painter, a practicing Hindustani Classical musician and an aspiring researcher in Microelectronics and Nanotechnology.Educated in Kolkata, Bangalore and Paris, he has been a student correspondent at The Statesman, Kolkata from his school, South Point. In 2012, in an international poetry competition organized in memory of Yeats, his poem was shortlisted among 40 other poets from all over the world. Having been nominated and won a plethora of literary and art prizes, his interview was published in the “The Arty Legume”, where he was asked to speak on cubism, existentialism in art and intrusion in a painting. He has been extensively featured in “Five Poetry Magazine”, “Muses”, “El Portal”, “Tagore for us”, “The Country Cake-Stall”, “The Orange Orchard”  etc. Besides, being a freelance writer and an associate editor for several magazines, he is the editor-in-chief of Kalomer Kalomishak, a bilingual magazine, which he founded in 2013. He currently divides his time between Kolkata and Paris, where he is currently pursuing his ‘diplômé d’ingénieur’.

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                                   The Merchant


The serpent was writhing in the ventilator for a long time
Concealing every breath waiting to sprout,
Imprisoning them in the interiors of my heart:
In the midst of crumbly mango leaves, assembled before the chest,
The amazing pace of its spiral motion,
Comes back to me
Like my long-run music.
Under asphyxiating conditions, I realize,
" Probably, it's not so easy..."
 
Looking towards the twilight  sky of my seventeenth autumn,
I assiduously advertise for the lovelorn of the afternoon,
" I have expatriated my heart
 Wanting  to be rubescent,
At least for sometime.
My merchandising has ended;
At a very low price,
I've weighed my wishes and whims
And sold them in the markets of malady.


                                    Whirligig
 

" O , what a goodly falsehood hath ; a goodly apple rotten at the
heart!......."
-Shakespeare
 
It's better to have some time to desist
Because it'll start all over again
In the midst of vendible decorated bazaars,
The variegated cooing.
But you'll never stop
Trampling over chattels
And after crushing them,
Walk through rudderless winds.
And while walking, you too will forget
Like everybody else,
The facetious effulgence of champa flowers
The first blooms of jasmine
The plenum of bnoichi fruits
The habits of autumn leaves.
And perhaps the oscillations in the heart of the ocean,
Where only risings exist,
That too will be encased by magical chants
You will whirr, turn only, like all who circumvolve 
In this inauspicious time of whirling maelstrom-
 
After the end of an unwanted winter,
Just like the first working fan, overhead
How life is spinning, and spinning around..
 
 
 
                                      A Nonexistence
 

" I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh, the things i learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me....."
- Robert B. Hamilton
I have been dragging along a certain nonexistence
Cloaking away these lacerations, the bleeding;
In the pace of a deluge, the forlorn, angry,
Emotions come tearing down,
As rocks of jeopardy ignite sparks.
Resting my head against placid walls of neglect,
The nerves of my forehead swell up.
Having touched the concrete of asperity, I have  consumed fire:
My mind wanders aimlessly on the dark shores of despair,
Where deaf to all appeals, the moon never rises.
 
Whilst the new-moon night descends to concuss the crest of every existence,
The bran and rice relinquish their fragrances.
 


                           The Time of Golden Leaves


 
There was a time when autumn leaves bearing the animation of yellow,
Leaving their arboreal existence, used
To fly around your lips
And  out of exhaustion used
To nest in your hair.
While pausing the boat of my troubadour's existence,
I used to watch how, the rays of the sun
While living with them,
While scattering delirious petals
On the stairs of twilight, used
To call upon the sky to descend.
The innocuous dusk, would then ravish
Over your chest.
 
Cooked with adventure, somebody, would send my febrile blood to the banquet of my heart;
Down-root, the exudation of nectar
Impasted over your body and
Time's tongue, anticipating.
The coruscation of lambency, in each fleeting moment
 Would traverse down your breasts, down the tenebrosity of your crepuscular triangle,
Into the dense coppice and while going further deep into the subaqueous abyss, would observe, bewildered,
How in the paralysed moments of bliss, the path has deepened,
How, in the flickering light of the noctiluca
The delight of penetration, every overwhelmed kiss
has been distracted;
How the celerity of every breath, boisterous at the fragrance of chameli,
Would return to your lips to say,
' I'm just remigrating...'
 
That pretense of slumber
That time of golden leaves, tend to cease,
Clutching onto my chest-hair, your song too, evanesces,
" The peacock of the night, has spread its train,
Where are you, my love? "
 

                                      A Tibetan Epistle
(For my tibetan friend, Kalsang. To the miseries of his homeland)
 

After dreams were murdered in plenitude
And the vermilion trail appeared in distress
And the reverberations of the epic fragrance were heard
The ephemeral earth underneath
The Emperor's feet, shook
And Gods were born.
 
Come, my lord, let's play a game.
While in playful stance, when every ray of light
From every entailed word becomes drunk, 
Let the Tibetan rivers enshroud you
In braids of emotion
Let the mountains become an entire race
And dance around you
Let the valley become the priest
For a while
Let the divine tea and porcelain vases
Break together as
A torrential waterfall
Because, like humans
Gods too, can escape..
And clutching onto bags of gold,
Can declare,
"This freedom is uncalled for.."
 
Just like Buddha's escapade
From the land of friendship
Of 'Mar' and of 'Refined Intelligence'
The bird had barged into the weaponry
Past the numerous
Blood-stained eyes
Metamorphosed into sunlight.
 
Onto the morning of your kingdom
My midsummer night's dream
Is knocking, my lord.
Open the door.
And breaking the bonds of my dreaminess
And while wide awake
I shall sing,
"Tune is the freedom of words".
 
Come, lets start.
 
  
 
           I’m 23 and I’m Wearing a White Kurta
 
 
I’ve heard bleeding of grasses.
I’ve heard peeling of onions.
 
Drop by drop.
Skin by skin.
 
Emotions, slashed on the cutting board.
 
Please don't splash that. Please don’t.
Tomato-blood;
I’m 23 and I’m wearing a white kurta.
 
Most days are bland. Most days are good.
Most days are days of dogs and kittens.
 
Most days are sure. Most days are true.
Most days are pages. Most days are chairs.
Most days,
I’m 23 and I wear a white kurta.
 
I’ve stepped on stones.
Stones have history.
History of marks.
Marks of water.
Water of ‘Me’.
‘Me’s of density
Smoked and bewildered.
 
Opening and not opening.
And not closing.
And not chasing.
 
Keys, hurling familiar sounds.
I know,
I’m 23 and I’m wearing a white kurta.
 
Somedays it’s the sun.
Somedays it’s the rebound.
Somedays it’s the hillside ground
Somedays it’s the hollow, hollow ground
Somedays it’s with a ballad, with a sweet ballad
Somedays it’s the sudden flushes of the landscape.
 
Lift me over human cravings,
Lift me over these ‘somedays’
Lift me, so that I can see,
I’m 23 and I’m wearing a white kurta.
 
The untruth of being
The shackled heart
The colossal loss
The intrepid woe
All circumvolve
 
Into nothingness.
Nothingness of sarees
Sarees of colour
Colour of consciousness
Consciousness of sea
Sea, the febrile sea.
 
When the zero hour closed in
Someone whispered,
‘Are you 23 and are you wearing a white kurta?’
 
I scarcely comprehend the words,
‘I’ve lived’ or ‘You’ve lived’
When I’ve made sense of,
‘I’m the thought of things’
When I’ve made sense of
Something less fleshed than time.
 
The time of the melancholic moon.
Alone, important and wise.
Darker than earth’s dark.
 
The first day after death,
When grief stopped being a purse,
I realised,
I’m 23 and I’m wearing a white kurta.