PRANAB GHOSH - POEMS

Pranab Ghosh is a journalist, writer, poet, translator and blogger. He used to write a blog “Existential Problems”. His poems and prose piece have been published and accepted by Tuck Magazine, Transendent Zero Press, Scarlet Leaf Review, Literature Studio Review, Leaves of Ink, Hans India, Dissident Voice, Spillwords, The Piker Press, Setu Magazine, Pangolin Review, Visual Verse, Memoryhouse etc. He has coauthored a book of poems, titled Air & Age. He has to his credit a translation of a book of Bengali short stories. The title of the English translation is Bougainvillea and Other Stories. His second book of poems and first solo book “Soul Searching and Other Poems” has been published by Scarlet Leaf Publishing, Toronto, in 2017. He is married and lives in Kolkata with wife, daughter and mother.

​What Progress? What Civilization!

​“Let me go!” I cry to
The world as I recoil
Into my shell, as a hurt
Snail and roll over to the
Nearest bush for COVER!
 
But the world refuses
To take note, as time
Bullies us to submission
And we live a quarantined
Life afraid of death.
 
A disease has taken over
Our imagination as millions
Get affected and thousands
Die world over, with promise
Of more deaths dished out
By the novel coronavirus.
 
From behind our masks our
Afraid eyes try to take
Stock of the situation
And we blame our civilization
For letting us down!
 

Kopai: A River Lost

​The bauls sing on this bank
And the cremation ground is
On the other; in between lies
Kopai, half dead…
 
Earth has eaten into the water
That meanders through it;
Vegetation has grown on
The river bed, singing a
Funeral song to the stream
That once could entice
The bard to write a
Line or two…
 
Half dead river
Lies in its naked bed
With poets reliving the
Stream that it once was.
 
Dried memories are
Photographed on its banks,
As couples look for poetry
Walking on its bed.
 
The lost river gasps as
We watch from a distance.
 
Notes: Kopai is a river in Santiniketan, the abode of the Nobel-winning poet of Bengal, India, Rabindranath Tagore.
Baul are itinerant singers found in rural West Bengal, a state in India

Khoai: A Tribute

Khoai lies like a new bride
Ravished on the first night.
 
There are scars on her neck,
Shoulders and back…
 
Her dark wide eyes implore
You for a night’s stand.
 
You ignore, as you follow the
Dried water trails to the
 
Deep green gorges
That lust for rain.
 
Notes: Khoai is a place curved out of nature, by nature, in Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
 

​Sal and the Santhal

Like an enchantress
She stands, her head
Held high trying to
Touch the sky in pride.
 
Her slim waist covered
By a cloth and back bare.
 
The trunk like an
Uncovered thigh
Lures you to
Her shade…
 
You want to rest,
Lose yourself
In her depths.
 
You are lost in the
Rows of trees,
Trying to find the
Black beauty, who
Dissolved into the
Earth she came from!
 
Notes: Sal is a kind of tall tree, whose stems are used to produce many things, including furniture
Santhal: A tribe in West Bengal. In the poem a Santhal woman is compared to the sal tree, both exquisite beauties by their own rights.