Eyestorms

sardar shitole’s palace
was the last to be ransacked
by a sudden gusto of time
creepers ran taking over a ruinous
sky
i didn’t
know
even when you had left
its just a matter of moments
you said
stones only remember
the violence
of eye storms.


Poem and Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra

Knives

knives i love in quiet submission
a sheer habit
a linear stabbed dermis
an ooze turning into a
splash hits the words
i incise into each night
breath streaks
a slash and then a murmur
of spent needs
sleep eludes unspoken lust
i cut my dreams often wide open
a night walker perhaps feels the wound
a dog yelps

in suggested desolation



Poem and Drawing by Amitabh Mitra

old gwalior

many aeons back
when rock changed faces
many a times and clan men
resisted irrefutably
time
the sky always gave way
to unhindered horizons
to newer lives
in dust torn
revelry
each time we passed the long
languorous tunnels of
waking
each time we found
ourselves on ledges
of looming betrayal
the fort grew taller and higher
overlapping many a skin
many a shadow
many a summers
and i thought that
perhaps one day
you would tell me a secret
of holding the lizard
in my grip
of a moment
knee deep in a drying river
of your breath
navigating a stronghold
of refute
you told me
the ruddy earth would also change
the peacocks would be no more
fungus and fern would darken
such agreements
such love
insisted
and we would remain torn
answerable only to the wind
why did we run away each time the
sun changed surfaces
why did we cross eye storms
ensnared long hidden stars
why did we eclipse in patterns
of lip talk on your neck
why did we turn one and only one
burnt one single night
why did we then never die
why did the fort
kept silent
why


beneath us
deep down
stayed the dargah
the mad man danced
looked at us
in sightless eyes
we had seen him before
much before
when the hot wind
blew away advancing
and departing reasons
a maratha willingness to melt away
at each nightend
we saw him still
shaking his head
his hands sang the song
of the next blitz
the dead around in cavernous
holes never slept
we knew
the rainriver
would storm down
in crypts and crevices
in sultry memory lanes
weather broken thickets
on to those
living and buried
we knew then
it was the moment
of a quiet dismissal
of unhastened departures.


families left for far shores
and houses sprung up on
rusty dreams
a dishevelled robe dragging
a far innocence
hands sought to hold a
belief
and eyes stored tears
unbelieving
on your lips i saw a murmur
loves disparity rootless in
undefined times
i told you the stillness of the fort
stillness of our drifting
stillness of the riversong
stillness of an everydaysky
yet
we lived
shattering long drawn thoughts
in strange dawns
in
old gwalior.

Poem and Ink Drawing by Amitabh Mitra

July Afternoon

july afternoon
an unbridled river rushed
down the fort
on to the chironji trees
a battle cry rose
eyes and steel
glinted in forsaken
shadows
a cloud burst galloped
in many a steed
on the dead and dying
the green turbaned man who lives
with bats in the cave
came out again
touched the rain
his eyes swirled
birds screamed
imprisoned
in stronger silence
we had held on to
stones
your hair closed me in
your hands held my thumb
palms caught the language
of rage
a maratha rain
a tale as old as this fort
you said
is a slaughter of rumination
you and me
would still grow
in this broken sun
in a fallacy
of such a gwalior noon.

Poem and Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra

East London

east london
an african sun suddenly stood
still
in the midst of rain
people
and thoughts
unseen
a song climbed
another tenor
splashing you
ferns of laughter grew wild
a patter of rainsteps
ran amok
shadows
tugged
whispered
of distant shores
long lost touch
wet with a shiver
of dawn.

Photograph by Kaustav Mitra

Rain

Steady patter of summer that swung into your
windows
eyes that begged me to keep quiet
and wait for a promised
rain
again.

Silk Screen Print and Drawing by Amitabh Mitra
From my book, A Slow Train to Gwalior

Haiti 4

yes, it seems just like yesterday
there were many tomorrows
after that
and many tomorrows
really never lived
a man who survived
asked
about the sea
and the stillness
of a zealot sky
voices had been crushed
long before that
an aging earth
in an unforgiving
corner
never breathed
that day.

Poem and Ink Drawing by Amitabh Mitra