Written on the back side of the page
1.
Whenever we start to talk
A butterfly comes out
from each mouth.
And hurriedly
they jump on each other.
Crowd gathers and they think it’s a fight
Some gamble in each other’s shadow.
Wings fall off slowly – yours and mine.
Time becomes empty.
We sit in silence
beside two dead butterflies.
2.
At the very start of a trip
you miss all the buses.
So there’s no urge in you to return.
All day long hawks fly
over your head and mine
They take notice of your flesh and fat
from ancient Kolkata.
This is the way a day comes to an end
Just a little before evening the police show up
They interrogate me about those buses.
arrest me once the evening is over.
Stranger
Absence
is actually the name of a foreign flower.
He couldn’t understand the nature of it
even after much effort.
Therefore, water constantly diminishes
in his drink
He moves the drink
between his fingers.
And he realizes-
a suddenly lost day
a very familiar-
a very familiar colour.
A calm cold tiger
with spots of white and green.
Preface
There is no river in this village
Long ago
some unknown man
used to go past by whistling
on a bicycle
That was a river channel
Years passed
Light from my mother still spreads
all over my home
Lonely like God, in a dream
Darkness here
like old furniture
has shaken off its pregnancy.
I have taken in my hands like the hands of dead
hair soaked in water
and I sit here
In the days of distant seasons
News of you reaches me
Around a window under lock and key
Fall
Ashes like snow
Snow like ashes.
Mr. Das’ tunnel
The path gradually winds down
from inside a shadow.
Noise of water from the spiral stairs.
Light shifts in the glass of drink
if you utter a cloud.
The bats hanging in a line-
I like this red line, slightly bent.
You find your own image
on the walls that you own.
In the alley of these walls
Mr. Das is walking alone.
Still stuck in his shawl
is a star freshly dug up from the mine.
Saibal Sarkar was born in 1980. He has a Master’s degree in Economics and presently works as a teacher in West Bengal. He is a member of the Duniyaadaari literature journal Editorial Board and has published three poetry collections so far – Ekush nombor bhalo thaka (2009), Beshi boyoser premer moton (2012), Purono Kobita (2020).
Animikh Patra: poet, storyteller, prose writer and translator, born in 1983 in West Bengal. He holds a Masters in English Literature from the University of Kolkata. He is the author of six collections of poems JOTODUR BOIDHO BOLI (2009), KONO EKTA NAM (2013), PATONMONER KURSI (2016), SANDEHOPROSUTO KABITAGUCHCHHO (2017), ALO DEKHAR NESHA (2018), RASTAR KONO CHHUTI NEI (2020). His poems have appeared in many literary and commercial magazines, as well as in anthologies. He has translated several contemporary Indian, Italian and Chinese poets into Bangla. and has participated in numerous collective projects in India and abroad. Together with Sanghamitra Halder he is co-founder and co-editor in chief of the bilingual literary site duniyaadaari.com, a literary magazine with which over the years The Dreaming Machine has established a partnership with exchanges of translations and presentations of poets and poets. For more information on the poet and the magazine see here interview in English on The Dreaming Machine website.
