Ajit Das Poems

World Heart Day! What’s it all about?
I know of human heart, animal heart,
but never heard world having a heart.
They say it is human heart, merging
...

Brute of a word! Why do you never
get off the back of my mind?

All day long I am tied to you.
...

If you're a lesser mortal, have you ever tried
to get through a bureaucrat
who somehow supposes taking calls,
picking up the phone himself, dwarfs his official status?
...

We may not have fear from friends and foes,
nor be afraid of the past, the present and the future,
nor harbour fear during the day and the night.
So says the wise man in the pages of the scriptures.
...

Subverting the system yielding no escape route
and law, finally, taking its own course,
the VIP feigns chest pain, moves in an ambulance
from hospital to hospital for urgent medical aid,
...

The snow-white body, red beacon, siren
fitted on the top,
the ambulance waits at the hospital's gate
for emergency calls.
...

Let us face it squarely: what exactly
is the job of a poet?
Perhaps this much is conceded: to relay life.
...

Outside, the night thickens
its wall of silence,
dissolving all echoes of sound.
...

Peaks, and still higher peaks
towering into the immense blue
beckon us as ever
from the height of their majestic splendour.
...

With so much of kneeling in obeisance
or perhaps only in ritual of habit
throughout my life,
praying for your benevolence
...