Rajosik Mitra. Arrhythmia

RAJOSIK MITRA – INDIAN YOUNG POET. HE WRITES IN ENGLISH, PUBLISHED A BUNCH OF POEMS IN «INDIAN LITERATURE»,THE MOST IMPORTANT ENGLISH LITERARY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY SAHITYA AKADEMI, INDIA. WRITES IN OTHER ENGLISH MAGAZINES. HIS POEM HAS BEEN TRANSLATED IN TELUGU, A RICH INDIAN LANGUAGE.

ARRHYTHMIA

Sudden crow-chick kicks

in my bag; I thought it was dead

and so picked it up and kept it safe,

but it's cawing and clawing now,

what must I do?

He's probably thinking

of his wagon-breaking gun running

g'old days- old googa tells me

I should spend the night

under the bridge, the black wide stream,

streetlights from the regime

of the last government,

olding and dim.

Saw my Nan crossing barb wires,

mid-size polythene bag

and biscuits with her;

the man shook me, and told

me

he didn't drink from the tap

for over two months,

two months! 'Cause

he knew a buddy who'd dumped a body

and it was rotting the whole time

in that tank,

and I drank;

I drank all of it, the dead man's juice

I thought

I've been drinking it day and night!

-Never mind, never mind that son,

he said- you better sleep here tonight

and tomorrow there'll be light

you'll take a train, and leave that bag behind,

leave it here.

Trains move like snakes if snakes could fly;

and in a heavy metal body through the

smog and cloud

brought me back to my head in the usual

arrhythmia of sunlight.

FOOTBALL WITH BRITISH

Somewhere now,

my grandpa is playing football

with the British,

they don't have spiked boots-

my grandpa doesn't,

and those who do

dig them

into his flesh;

he doesn't wince,

but he could never play football again.

Years later,

my mother is crying,

he's motionless, on a white bed

wrapped in flowers and plastic

at the curb outside his own doorstep.

MUSHROOM-HEAD

The best gift I had

I'd kept it somewhere

I can't remember anymore;

Bicyclists fall,

dogs bark, cats scratch

the surface of the floor;

Cable breaks, cars crash

ships sleep down below;

I, sleepless

rhymeless, losing form,

dream in black,

ghosts naked without desire.

The Himalayas yawn and swallow

air, sea, Tethys maidens

on the backs of dolphins

and spit them dead cold out in snow;

loaded

purple deep streets

look up at the evening,

and I met him,

born again, whom I walked with in Egypt.

In Babylon whom I was beside,

on the roadside of Sinope,

Diogenes sleeping.

Love I never had walks down

by the banks of Ganges,

old rundown shut forgotten

jute factories;

her master's voice is quiet.