'Good Morrow' Poem by Dyuti Banerjee

I am running out of verse,
Rhyme fails me-
The first time,
In times that were and are to be, -
In my poetic career:
I turn to blank verse, unadorned and severely terse….

Not in sheer desperation,
Nor in disillusionment of hope,
But in a rush of mad, blind ecstasy,
Ushered by the light of discovery-

On a fine morn
A cloudy, cool one in the eighth month of the year,
Saw I myself, in the mirror of my mind-
Saw I in the tears if my eyes reflected,
Not regret, but a deeper, deeper sorrow arisen from the misery of others.
Smelt I- the smell of a better world in my nostrils in the mirror of my mind-
Saw I a complete human being-
Felt I a complete pride-for being so.
The happiness there was, encompassed all the horizons of my mind, heart-soul;
Filled my body, my senses, with its wanton fullness….

…..And then I wake up-:
The hot sun crept in
Through the gap in the curtains;
Interfering with the conditioned air of the room
Smell of sunshine….
I wake up, sit up….
The world’s a haze- I pick up my spectacles-
My mind’s a haze- I pick up the fragments of my dream-feel the pureness of happiness;
Faces flash by, faces with smile stuck onto them
With common glue-
Remembrances flood the crevices of my brain;
….They call these emotions; so do I
Yet I feel these are nameless-

Habit drags me to the basin, and-
Minty sweetness in my mouth-
A mirror in front of me-
A virtual, erect, laterally inverted me-
Hair right-aligned strands of obtuse angles,
Some perpendicular to each other-
Pillow lines running parallel to each other on my face,
Hunger gnawing oesophagus-downwards;
Nose smells fried eggs, and….and….
-BREAKFAST IS READY…...