2009 January

Bhaskar Roy Barman

So much obsessed with a piece of work

devolved upon me and fed up with it,

I felt as if I were waving my hand at a shadowgraph

to walk a bit slow to have me catch up with it.

Hard at work, I got habituated to the scampering of mice

in the holes scattered around the walls, though.

I found myself visualizing a phakir of old

meditating in the silence and loneliness of the river.

indistinct and flitting fragments of memory

kept haunting my mind groping for an impetus

to finish off the piece of work.

Yonder in the station a train whistled a warning

to stray passengers to get in

and threw splinters around to pierce

through the silence of the night.

Fed up of the silence and the loneliness of the house

- I had rented the house to work in -

I wished I had not taken up the assignment

Bhaskar Roy Barman

Once on an evening in a desolate place

far from the madding crowds eternal strife

I stood closeted with the eve-beauty

manifested around the place,

exposing myself to the eerie and stifling air

and trying to attune my ears to the bacchanalian fits

of silence dancing in moonlight.

My eyes darted over to a pond

as big as a lake,

then bumped into a teenaged girl beckoning

at a figure of a boy bathing in a profusion of moonlight

at a little distance .

The scene had me remember myself sitting at a table

In a crowded restaurant

and a girl the age of the girl yonder near the pond

treading unescorted her way through the drunken fits

of many a drunkard ogling at her beauty

over to a handsome boy sitting at a table near mine

and smiling an intimate smile.

She was fearless of the drunkenness of the drunkards

and the way they are ogling her,

as was the girl yonder near the pond

of the silence and desolateness of the place.

Bhaskar Roy Barman

When the world itself looked exhausted,

revolving round the sun;

when a bumble-bee sounded tired

of humming round a ternate leaf;

when a few fishermen were venting their rage on their net

-they looked fed up of mending their net off and on -

and when the fish were leaping and playing in the river,

sure as they were the net wont be thrown over them,

yonder on a field a serpent was shedding its slough,

indifferent to a group of women wending their way

across the field

and to a pedlar crying his wares along the road

that ran parallel to the field

At this moment, as usual, a boat rowed in

disgorged two men onto the bank.

A music strummed on a violin floated in the air for a while,

then rose up and disappeared into the sky.

Presently the men returned empty-handed to the boat

and winked at the boatmen to row the boat away.

Suddenly the sky go t covered over with pitch-dark clouds.

The fishermen looked up and thought

there would be festivities of lightning

and the river would dance to the rumblings .

They prayed for the safety of the men on the boat.

In response to their prayer the clouds went away across the sky.

The fishermen resumed mending their net;

the world continued revolving round the sun;

the bumble-bee went on round the ternate leaf

and the fish were still leaping and playing in the river .

But the serpent had shed its slough and slid into its hole.

Bhaskar Roy Barman

Once in my childhood I watched mesmerized a magician

magic everything away from before my eyes

and thought he had descended, endowed with supernatural power,

from a fairyland where illusions reigned supreme

to transport us into the world of illusions.

I got thrilled at the flying of a pigeon away

from under his hat

and at the emerging of a hare out from inside his pocket.

I got so tranced at the magicians acts of pouring forth

illusion after illusion of the magic world,

waving his magic wand.

I forgot the time passing imperceptibly by.

I found myself jerked to the harsh reality

only when the magician goodbyed us

and strode away from the stage.

Many years had passed since then

and the magician had faded into oblivion.

One day, when sauntering in a park,

When the sun was ready to dip down the western horizon,

I bumped into that magician, now an old man

staring across the park at the rows of trees.

I walked to him and asked:

Were you not that magician

who used to have people thrill to his magic feats?

Yes, I were, the old man replied, smiling a rueful smile.

Someone stole my magic wand

and now I ceased to be a magician.

Bhaskar Roy Barman

The kaleidoscope stood befrilled with splendour;

no messenger from on high did descend to hand

it blessings, though.

The rassling trees coruscated in an interplay of light and dark,

the sun dipping down the western horizon .

Exuding a unisonant desire to search for the amaranth,

a group of youths were chanting their way along the path

that led into the forest.

They had heard elders gossip about the amaranth

they had never themselves seen,

and tell themselves they had heard of the flower

from the cowboys who herded cows into the forest.

The youths wished the cowherds had sculpted the image of the

amaranth

on the bark of the trees.

The amaranth was said to blossom when the light of the departing

day

intermingled with the darkness of the incoming night.

Save for the interplay of light and dark

the kaleidoscope has nothing else to boast.

N o messenger did descend from on high

to hand it blessings from High.

Someone might have deciphered the speech of the forest.

Ahead was a great hole caressed by darkness,

where no light was allowed to intrude.

The kaleidoscope uncrowned with blessings from High

always changed colours to beguile you off the great hole.

Did the amaranth bloom in or around the great hole?

wondered the youths.

Bhaskar Roy Barman

The moment I close my eyes

in meditation on the unfathomable

I visualize golden fleeces of cloud

perambulating the skies

and old faces peering down through the fleeces,

their faces writhed into a semblance of smile.

With them I used to sit at a table in a restaurant

by the window overlooking a garden.

The smells of the garden-flowers

Would spatter against the window-pane.

They left me closeted with the ever-changing world.

I feel , whenever I sit at the table, their hanging around the table.

I glory in living in the ever-fresh changeability

of the ever-changing world.

They have stuck at the last words

they had uttered at the table

and at the last glance they had thrown

through the window around the garden.

I can have trees felled. if I like to  I often do,

for it fetches me a good amount of money  I can,

if asked to, stand on a dais to deliver a mellifluous speech

on the necessity of afforestation.

I can attire myself in ultra-modern habiliments

when I go out with my wife to have people think

we are but a happy couple,

and to get ourselves photographed to remind ourselves

we married each other one day.

But they remain clothed in the garments

they had worn at the table.

In meditation I visualize them mocking me,

for I have shut my eyes to the truth of life..

Bhaskar Roy Barman

As does the Great River

on to the sea and back

to the matted hair of Lord Shiva,

on flows the life-stream

adorned with ornaments,

as is a newly-wed couple.

Following on the footprints of the Great River

that leaves nonchalantly behind

a good many water-drops

evaporating midway through

and mingling with the clouds,

the life-stream does not mind

about as many human drops bowing out,

stripped of their embellishments

they once prided themselves on.

One of the human drops bowing out

was a friend of mine, succumbing

to the excessive love of his wife

and to his in-laws feigning it.

His father, as if to mock his son,

sustained himself much father in the flow

less loved by his wife

by his in-laws the least.

Bhaskar Roy Barman

He knew for sure he was going to succumb

to the eminence grise of an alien thoudea he dreaded;

alien to him was its import, though he felt

its mumming effect in the fibre of his being .

The truth to tell, the unsavoured taste of the thoudea

masterminded his musings over its effect

and made him feel as if he were a human floweret sicklied

by the leafaged shade of his dread and fenced in.

The thoudea was mercilessly breezing in on him.

He knew not where to flee from its onslaughts.

Lympathic pallor reigned supreme on his face,

as he readied himself to face up to the inevitable.

Two years later all leading newspapers flashed the news

he was selected for a literary award.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger’s hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher’s mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.