by Bakul Banerjee
The stillness of the snowstorm surrounds me.
Through that veil of my day dream, I notice
you, a reticent boy of fifteen by a tropical pond.
You hesitate, move with stealth, taking in
changing colors on the kingfisher soaring
toward the sunlit sky as it escapes shadows
of palm trees on the green water.
You painted your poems in a soft meter
to the glory of haunting, intimate deaths.
Through the snowstorm, I surmise
your hymns to deaths and sometimes
resurrections across the century.
To the slaughter houses of Pnohm Penh
or to the royal burial chambers of Mycenae
I walked with you and your meditation
on tales of redemptions across geography.
Here, in this frozen land, not alien to me
anymore, I have time to notice wrinkles
in my face, remembering fair maidens
long-lost who navigated meandering
rivers through ages. You serenaded them.
I study ever-fading photo-montages
of your dreams in your deliberate poems.
Then, beyond this arctic winter, I dream,
of discovering a shy May-apple flower
hugging the snowy earth, not a Hill-Glory,
bloom, hidden under its umbrella of shiny leaves.
They resurrect every year with vernal equinox.
[i] Jibanananda Das (17 February 1899 – 22 October 1954) was a Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist. The reticent author, who was not recognized during his lifetime, is one of the premier poets of the post-Rabindra Nath Tagore era in India and Bangladesh. Some of his dreamy imageries are explored in this poem.
[ii] The Kingfisher or Machranga used to be a common bird in Bengal.
