Biswajit Banerji

The Story Behind Poetry

A brilliant forest-dark
sets around the  pen's tip and
only a silent scamper of words
up-turns the density of loneliness.
Sharp claw-prints on wet thoughts
and an unmown wordiness
account for the deep ante-natal stir
in the nib. A green movement in grass--
word-birth--a pathway unwinds--
this way words are waylaid, tamed
and meanings claimed.
Poetry survives like a memory
from an Auswitz of words.

     

The Man and the Mine

A man crouched tending his field.
His mood, hands and the grubbed earth
made a flowing dough and with a sudden scoop
of his trowel, it came up: the landmine--
like an infant's solitary skull.
It smelt of the planter's vivid palms
and its smooth accumulated angst
reclined nude on the back of time.
A splash of sun made the mine seem
so light it almost crept
out of the man's hold but
just stayed tethered to the peace
that kept raining like leaves
from his lashes. When softly stroked
the mine burst into sobs;
for the man to sink like pebbles
in death's eye was consoling.


Song for a Drowning Man

Your soal nicks the sheen of the river
and then the ankle, fibula, knee-cap...
each reverentially violates
the natural decorum of water.
You sink slow with grace: gasping elegantly,
feeling the contours of the liquid flesh.
Your languid drowning lines are birth-signs
of a new river, glance a tapering whirlpool,
fingers slender tributaries and
your mouth a river-mouth swathed in hydrilla.
And when the carps kiss your reedy lashes
or the river-scum touches up the cracks in your lips
the red-alga teeters like a hint of shame
on the cold skin of water. Now
the chastity of weeds is a thing of past.
Tonight, for once you'll sleep well
with planktons in blood
and the river in your fluid arms.


Bird-Tracks

Eye heats the winter sky
so it is soft and scoopable
like  the sea-floor;
and when the sun and hot birds
are clearly gone, the space
sags with bird-tracks--
their fluid effulgence constantly
makes an optical drink and exactly when
the tracks' clarity consumes the core
of my vision, is a breathless mystery
of light. What hurts most is the deliberate
silence of these tracks. Speak! The speech
is swathed in a wordy serum--
suddenly time's digestibility is suspect.

             
When the Fallen Leaves are Just Wet

When the fallen leaves are just wet
and untossd by the wind, the ground
holds these like dreams in an eye.
The adamant softness of their smooth
dorsal sides lends a delicate curvature
to their rich green blanks. While picking up
one of these and passing fingers
over the intricate venation, one can still feel
the gentlest flow of green consciousness
in their veins and even the lightest grasp
seems sufficient to silence the leaf.
Stomata by stomata the leaves
renounce their breaths and the meticulousness
with which they still cover the ground
springs from the same old habit through which
they once covered the boughs. At sundown
the leaves' writhings is the absolute perfection of pain
and it is most tempting to gather their pathos
with eyes and cry. Looking
at the leaves turning in wind like
sleeping dreaming children, it is hard to imagine
that these burn exactly like human deads when
mopped up and lit dry. Possibly these leaves
were children in an earlier life
who got charred in
a nursery school-fire.

Biswajit Banerji is a thirty-six year old guy from India. He has a degree in mechanical engineering and works in a steel plant for a living. Biswajit also holds a diploma in creative writing. Poetry reading and writing is a passion for him and he hopes to continue his tryst with words more intensely in the years to come. He has been previously published in the ‘Journal of Indian writing in English' & ‘poesis' – both publications from India.