Three Poems
Woman Reads the News
Tomlika Pondasheth Lapel on breast a woman reads the news:
Accident-murder-casualties-political tugs-of-war
Glowing cricket star along with playing field lofts
into the drawing room
Then finally the weather--- Bad weather
Yet the launch ferries had plied
A sudden storm, one overturned in the
Ganges floodwaters
The unmoved newsreader informs us—
One hundred fifty missing---twelve bodies
recovered
Among them nine women-children-old A woman reads about women
And in this age of lapels
Synonymous with women are children and the old.
Dais
Subodh Sarkar On stage
There is some kind of drink.
That drink
Has no name.
It isn't called honeyed
It isn't called whiskey.
Those who go on stage
Only they
Partake of that drink. You'll see on the dais
One clear glass
Within it clear, transparent water
On top of it an upturned saucer. I say to those who do not get on stage:
That's not water, that's booze. Ministers
Poets
Bureaucrats
Vice-chancellors
All of them take that drink Otherwise, how can they lie so enchantingly into the mike?
Daily Life
Farhad Mazhar Early morning knock on the door I race to open it
Nothing there just flowers nodding in the empty wind
A fleeting fog, dewdrops on the vast fields at night
Pieces of paper left behind by somebody on the grass. Eight a.m. A tempo-wheeled middle-class day
Somebody slips and breaks a skull on a roof
Head lowered I stare out at the speeding cars
Suddenly lock eyes with someone riding a rickshaw My office is on the upper storey, a panting climb
A bone-tiredness makes my back ache,
Work like a machine glasses glued to my eyes
Then spy a letter whose writing I know: With a broken nib in a gentle easy everyday style
Somebody has written one's name in capital letters
The inkwell's lip was probably broken, and three
Inkdrops tiny and large spilled in careless haste. This spurning! First you came close to me, then withdrew
Gave the caged bird a glimpse of open skies and endless space
This is how it ends, will end, the night comes on as usual Early morning knock on the door again I race to open it...
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments