Biswajit Basu

It is not easy, and I don't know why,

To bid a retiring friend and office-colleague goodbye,
...

The skies are as black, the winds wail a dirge,
The seas below roils in malevolent angry gray,
...

The forest is clothed in green and brown,
Sunrays slant through the leafy mantle above,
As I skip along uncharted paths,
I can see a profusion of colours I love.
...

The red shawl frames her countenance soiled,
A beautiful young girl of Pashtun descent,
Her brows gently arched,
Guides you to the twin ovals below,
...

A drop of rain on the window pane,
Rolls,
...

In the beginning of Creation,
At the beginning of the very beginning,
Before there came space and time,
Floating free in a primeval void,
...

I am a mediocre guy and I am not being sarcastic,
I have never done anything spectacular or even mildly drastic.
Of experience I have a lot and it is normal that I should,
I have full experience in failing, having failed every way I could.
...

I wander alone dressed in resplendent light,
Through swirling clouds of evanescent haze,
Ghostly and suffused with myriad thoughts,
But they tauntingly elude my grasping gaze.
...

Night set in and Kuala Lumpur airport is awash with light,
Milling passengers hurry rushing through the checks,
Some with phones glued to ears, some with eyes brimming tears,
Bidding farewell one last time; heart heavy with unknown fears.
...

I went to the office today,
On my table with the papers there lay,
Some bread and some jam,
And half a leg of ham,
...

I can still remember when I was about ten years of age,
I began to think of the world outside my childhood cage.
Science, art, beauty and people were taking on a new hue,
That was so distinctly different from a little boy's view.
...

Teenagers love an adrenaline rush and experiences that are even stranger,
But, for us oldies', boarding a full bus in Kolkata is the ultimate in danger.
Office over, I was at the bus stop, but buses were coming in full,
I had promised to pick up my son after a football match in school.
...

Why do many poets today revel in adversity?
Painting pictures so dark, gloomy and blue,
Why do they forget that many want to be happy,
And yearn for poetry of a more colourful hue?
...

Every moment of each and every day,
Fraught with the possibility of a million chances,
Unthinkingly and involuntarily we ride a single way
And implicitly hope that our future it enhances.
...

In Chile, the ice-age carved out a chequered coast,
Its southern tip touching Antarctica-almost,
A wondrous land, right down to the Cape,
Bleak seas and the hills, in fact the entire landscape.
...

It was dark and the light was low,
As the smudgely sun rose from the west,
All was quiet in the lands beneath,
As soundly snored Cossipore.
...

Thinning are the clouds streaked black and grey,
Tears shall well out of thine eyes no more,
Sorrow I will dismember with smite of my sword,
As the misty dawn ushers in a bright new day.
...

Why is it that the plaintive wail of a lovelorn soul,
Spewing heartbursts of love, unheeded by his lady,
Or the welling tears of an orphaned foal,
Staring blankly at her mother’s bullet-ridden body.
...

Thinning are the clouds streaked black and grey,
Tears shall well out of thine eyes no more,
Sorrow I will dismember with smite of my sword,
As the misty dawn ushers in a bright new day.
...

Floating in the spacetime of our cosmos,
Endlessly orbiting round and round,
Riding upon a silvery sunbeam,
Mysterious and profound,
...