SAYAN AICH BHOWMIK - POEMS

Sayan Aich Bhowmik is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Shirakole Mahavidyalaya, Kolkata.  A published poet, he is also the editor of the blog Plato's Caves, a semi-academic space for discussion on life, culture and literature.

​Somewhere Else

I don't need alcohol to want you
And you needn't be sober to refuse.
You could just move your fingers
Around the rim of the glass..
Again and again
Like the earth around the sun.
I'd still be at the table
Plucking the stars from inside your clothes.
I'd still be at the table
Working on the order of words
To adorn that letter of parting
I've been wanting to write.
Isn't death another way
Of being accepted somewhere else?

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​ Timbre

For long now, I have been searching
For a voice with a particular timbre,
Carrying with it, the threat of a suicide bomber.
I'm out on the streets
Where men have their desires,
Nailed on glass doors
Revolving faster than Jupiter.
The stars are now
Forever red traffic lights.
The streets, never ending female bodies,
With cigarette burns
And paper cuts
Are all straight lines
That go everywhere
That go nowehere.
And I am out still,
Looking for that voice,
With that particular timbre
That can talk a restless river
Into sharing afternoon tea with it.

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​Masks

When I write in Urdu
The words drag themselves from the right
Like children taken to school
Against their will.
The letters set up camp
Lighting a fire
With the remains of their discarded brothers.
In the evening, they sit by a stream
The surface of which is polished mercury.
And whisper sad songs to each other.
Halfway through the poem,
An unruly couplet wanders off
To a nearby village
And returns smelling of,
Grandmothers' shawls.
The others, having already reached the end
Exchange their masks
And prepare to walk again.

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​OVERCOAT

Last Friday,
Everyone I knew
Living inside me
Walked out of my room
Like disciplined and industrious
Summer ants.
The bridges that needed to be burnt
Surrendered meekly to my
Letter writing skills.
And my visit to the laundry
Only revealed that
I had forgotten to collect the overcoats
In whose folds 
I'd hide as a child.
The afternoon wore
My worn out pyjamas
And walked the neighborhood
Ghosts, too old to scare children.
When evening came
I sat with a bottle of longing
That I've been brewing
Since I was 17.
I sat there,
Waiting for morning
The way the abandoners pets
Wait for their masters to return.

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