Gopal Lahiri (India) is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 29 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry is also published across various anthologies as well as in eminent journals of India and abroad. His poems are translated in 16 languages. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021. He is the recipient of the Poet of the Year Award in Destiny Poets, UK, 2016, Setu Excellence Award, 2020, Pittsburgh, US and Indology Life-Time Achievement award, West Bengal, India. His latest collection of poems ‘Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets.’ has received Ukiyoto Award.

English

TRIPOD

1.

That Synagogue, older than my grandmother

stands resolute,

a meditation, a prayer till the final hour,

I carry home all along a dashboard of happiness

in this lonely night.

2.

The way the night conjures a dream

and gather words,

in an estranged colour,

a portion of me hides under the skin

long before the rain.

3.

Sitting in a park bench

I concentrate on the tiny insects,

scavenging the last specks of pollen,

as the summer sky smells like love,

no one knows what conflict it may breed now.

MEMORY OF SKY

Inspired by Jayanta Mahapatra’s ‘Dawn’ poem

I look up at my personal ceiling, it opens another
darkness. The glass, the old faces, the pink candles
assemble in one mindscape,
the struggle of light, flickering, melting in earthly hue.

Faith and fear- knead it into something,
I know the paradox in Manu Parekh’s Banaras,
colours of river and sky’s reflection stich poems
and answer the sleepless nights in silence.

Deep inside, there is the common motif
the temples and shrines give imagery and symbol
creating the riddle of faith, fearful, bleeding,
crowded with hesitancies.

I hope the whisper drawing out its deeper flavour
The common humanity
sometimes even rupture in one dream,
finding a quiet place at the corner.

Someone sighs behind the curtain, footsteps erase
I cannot become your river, some words loosen the
haze, the shadow, maybe not,

There is a memory of sky in this dark chamber,
of the sun going down, how the earth smells
paint, brush. hands and everything.

 

* Jayanta Mahapatra is an eminent Indian Poet.
* Manu Parekh is a uniquely Indian Painter