Kanchi Dasgupta: Kanchi Dasgupta is a young poet, teaches English literature in an international school and part time in a college. Her mail id is- kanchidasgupta@rediffmail.com

 SPRING-CLEANING

A thick layer of dust had settled on my life…
A knotted life suspended in spider’s webs
Mutilated-dreams-begot-Frankensteins haunted each corner
Scarred moments hung in the closet
Rotting garlands of faded tears, fetid with the stench of despair
Stained the wood ---
The accumulated debris of hopes and fears.
It was Spring-cleaning time…

It was Spring-cleaning time
The resolve arrived with Swiss precision each time
Mocking the security of seasonal infidelity
And each time, I wasted hours cleaning and polishing the wreckage
Mocking the infidelity of life.



HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR U

...and then this night when the clamour on the shores were silenced
when the jostling faces of sand stood in drooping silence
when scorns had been shed and critiques put on hold
only till the next war against silence would start at daybreak
I dived into the depths of your calmness
and searched all night for my lost pearls of wisdom.

Where had I lost them? How many days ago?
How many times have I woken up startled
the fragments of my dreams melting fast in the folds of my sheets
and reached for them in the thawing darkness?
How many times have those hands come down
and clutched my throat to stop the liquid flow of oozing numbness?

I cannot tell

I just know your touch heals me
beyond seamless fathoms of cure
and I set out for the confluence
of joy and pain and heat and steel
that melted in my sea of silence a long time ago.

Your dove of peace met me on the way
and I closed my eyes in the ethereal bliss of eternal tranquillity
this is my destiny, this thatched roof,
dripping with early morning dew
listless puddles rippled with freshly washed sparrows
in the afternoon's deafening calmness
and those canoes at sundown stretched no limit
towards the reddening expanse of the sea.
 

Stack of Dreams

Moon-bleached nights languish in the dusky shallows of the mind
And curl in wisps of jasmine,
Desires sharpened to a razor’s edge cling as charm bracelets
And spill red wine.
Heavy-lidded Mediterranean langour stretch manicured feet
And the afternoons shimmer in the gold dust of dreams.

And I wait for you…
Wait in mehendi-stained afternoons, in rain-awakened nights and silver-filigreed
mornings
With Zen-like patience and in Saturday night fever
I wear you like a star in my eye and like a red wound my forehead
And I wait….

I will stack my dreams for you, freshly laundered
Soiled as they are in the heat and dust of these stifled whimpering moments
Sepia stills of fantasies, silk tassels of half-forgotten complaints, shy
knickknacks in muted checks,
Crisp muslin nights, satin afternoons and pastel mornings
All neatly folded into the nooks and crannies of my mind
Perfumed by a potpourri of anticipation and readiness.

And when you come
I will unfurl them inch by inch – exotic Persian, minimalist, Bohemian
And stretch out my days and nights.