BASAB CHAUDHURI

This morning
words whispered in my ear—
give us a little space to thrive,
so we may become a poem.
...

Will you come to see me when I die?
I know I will die some day,
but the day is not known,
so I cannot invite you in advance.
...

At this moment
bombs are exploding,
smoke billows outward,
people hide indoors,
...

So many roads in front of me,
For someone might make a difference.
I am now lost at the crossing—
Could you tell me the shortest route?
...

Something works between us two
that neither of us knows for sure.
The road turns at the same time,
a flower starts to speak in rhyme.
...

If you belong to everyone,
You belong to no one.
That's the design.
That's how it's built.
...

Often I leave my house and go elsewhere,
for work or for some job poorly defined.
I go -
there is no one to accomany me except the sky,
...

Get me a pen -
I will write with it
a love letter
to all of them.
...

A lovely fruit—
the pomegranate holds
punicalagins,
antioxidants,
...

A few steps forward and then coming back,
I pick up pebbles and carefully put them in my pocket -
just to throw them away later, may be a few minutes after
I accumulated them.
...

When it rains, my cataract eyes see more than ordinary,
behind the falling drops, the river disappears,
the horizon comes near,
the grey sky becomes my heart,
...

Newspapers have pretty much lost their importance now,
instant news are made available, every bit digital.
Continuous crunching of digits make sensation
with continuous munching of an appropriate material.
...

Standing at the butcher's shop on a Sunday morning, I think -
there is a long queue and orders vary,
the taste bud gets stimulus from the dead animal's body,
that's when I feel - are Sundays especially cruel?
...

Every morning —
a new world,
a new environment,
a little unknown,
...

For a long time
I haven't seen a sparrow.
I do not see them.
...

Drops of water from the pigeon's feather went up and down until there were streams of water flowing as rivers and rains all over the desert that signalled peace all over and all the blood immediately turned into life and all the life turned into bright stars illuminating heart and soul and all beyond the soul which no one could think of and the factions became one and all while all became one as there was everyone rejoicing and no one complaining over such a world that could be possible although on a fictitious plane and time beyond cognition while all the words became a poem and all the poems became a song and all the songs became love that bound all people everywhere known and unknown and the bird became many birds which ushered many more drops of water giving streams and rivers and waves and stars and men and laughter and poems and songs and finally one word called wisdom that started flowing without any comma or semicolon or fullstop and all reign of terror vanished yielding a kingdom having language without any fullstop no remorse no depression no tears only smile only laughter only peace
...

This delight with speed and water and waves and laughter and coffee and wine and tales and music and dance and decor will come to an end as the moon is in eclipse and the cosmic event puts an imprint on hearts bringing all together in the eerie darkness life finds sometimes interesting and takes a little time to watch as the birds in the nest find the event peculiar in their own sense as men judge sensibly the movement of the stars and the planets watching them from a distance and even now conch shells are blown to remember the character that devours the moon a faith that is still worshipped while it is science altogether although faith is sometimes better than science as long as faithfuls do not kill and the same applies to science as long as the inventions are not put to use to calculate the moment of murder but the world is not as linear as ordinary men and women think instead it is highly nonlinear where murder happens with smile and as the bard said all the world is a stage although he didn't comment on the ease of acting that generations after him have learnt so well that even he would have been flabbergasted with the prowess of the actors of the twenty first century and the dead scientists leading the Manhattan project rising in their grave to look at the marriage of their science with the modern artificial intelligence that is beautifully anthropic and lovely and lively decimating in microseconds while we want further improvements in technologies so that just a mere thought could remove the one disliked because disliking is the mother of abhorrence and abhorrence is the mother of fury and fury is the mother of fumes that signal the finishing of the job so well planned
...

Every morning a few photographs reach my phone,
with a wish of 'good morning' they speak of wisdom.
Some say, time reveals the face of acquaintance.
Another says, we all are alone - yet afraid of loneliness.
...

Do you want me to go through the details of the news?
Does it really matter any more?
A sudden breathlessness;
unconsciousness would have been better -
...

The world rolls on -
through clouds, flow, flowers, butterflies, children's laughter, walker's boredom,
through parties, business districts, high-rise complexes, malls and occasional suicides,
through nostalgia, melancholy, dream, fulfilment, the price of stocks,
...