SUMANTA CHATTERJEE.

   MERMEN AND OTHER POEMS

MERMEN


Fathomless streets and footpaths,
Crowded markets and alleys
Enshrouded by self-centred lights
Loosen from evening’s grip,
Typical middle-class excitement
Of oblivion, follows harmoniously
After job-marriage-children and death,
Nothing so boring on the same tune
Flows from the lonely pan-stall.
Millions of questions unasked though-
People are living the trails of life.



Ashes of the last smoke
Drowned some at the poetic
Remnants of their aspiring selves
Left a faint aroma of desires,
The desires, chained by codes and conducts;
They heard me looking at them
With horizon-stretched fanatismo,
They lived with me in dark
To spoil the spice of hackneyed fashion.
Millions of questions unasked though-
We wanted to leave some trails of life.






EXCLAMATION MARK


Confined to infinite commas,
Rhythm of life punctured,
Ransacks for a single
Exclamation mark out of the heap,
But in vain.



Too many colons and semicolons
And hyphens have a way of eating into
The pith of the rhyming stem
Oh for a single exclamation mark,
Before the full stop comes?





CHRISTMAS RETURNS


The lonely road of Christmas
With lights shimmering
On the snow-white complexion
Returned and went far away
With the sound of church bells,
With the aroma of chocolate shops
And colours of merriment inside houses!



I were a boy again
I were a boy again of my town
With rosy lips, blue eyes and golden hairs
Wished some thousand times
To have a gift, to have her kiss,
The most beautiful kiss of lifetime
And Santa never disappointed me!



Was that a simple kiss
Or she poured the wine of her joy
In my innocent heart?
I could never know why
The relish of the first kiss
She concealed had to escape from
The lonely road of Christmas …!