The Lost Reminiscence

Menonimus

September 6, 2023

THE LOST REMINISCENCE

The Lost Reminiscence

(Collected Poems)

Menonim Menonimus

Internet Edition

www.menonimus.org

The Lost Reminiscence (A Collection of Poems) ‘by Menonim Menonimus, Published by www.menonimus.com

The Lost Reminiscence

Internet Edition

Website:www.menonimus.org

Price:

D.T.P. by A. Shahriar

Printed at:

CONTENTS

A Picture

Mother, I’m Well

Memory

I’ve Been Looking Up

Her Message

Fire

Question

My Dear Sun

Dream

None Should

How I Felt

I Love You

Dream -II

It is Raining Heavily

Vain Glory

The Image

The Wind

Deceit

Ego

To My Beloved

A Lark Wept Bitterly

Your Love

My Sufferance

My Poems

You Are For Me

I Wished to Be

Still Then

The Lost Reminiscence

To Medona

They Say So

I’ve Nothing to Lose

She Came to Me

Your Gun

When You Smile

You May Have Your Saying

Once

Still Then

Garland

Again After This

The Tender Love

To My Soul

A Pen Without Ink

Lonely Entity

A Token

What

To You

A Letter to Merina

Fear

Dead Earth

The Verses Make Us Cry

Helen

To Octavio Puz

A Song

Fear- II

After Waking Up

For Your Love

A Poem of Coming Spring

Message

Far off Desire

The Worm is Shrieking

What a Pain

At Deep Night

Praise

This Deep Dark Night

There is a Cemetery

Who Sings the Slogan

For Freedom Again

As There is Life

I Had Kept Your Name

O Beloved

The Hoary Herd of Hopes

Who Appreciates

Your Face

Dead Fishes in Float

There is

I’m in a Heaven

Song

Separation

I’ve Never Seen Her Crying

Immortality

Triton-II

When I Meet You

I See Better in the Dark

A Tale

For Love

To My Patrons

Time and Tide

I’ve Come to Know You

The Tradesman of Love

To Merina

……………………………………………..

Table of Contents

THE LOST REMINISCENCE

(TEXT)

A Picture

You had drawn a picture in my canvas called ‘Life’.

Not in water-colour

But in ink imported from China in black through Nepal

You began to draw the picture

And I lay motionless like a corpse.

You said:

Don’t move

I remained steady

You said:

Shut up your eyes

I fell into sleep.

You said:

Spread your hands and feet.

I did so.

You said:

Be naked from head to feet.

I followed without asking a question.

Hours after hours you studied me

You studied my every pores and hole

My respiration and the throbbing of my chest

And then you completed your drawing.

When I woke up

I found you have departed

Since that day I have been carrying the picture with me

Thinking that to be my own.

But just now, after a long span of many years

I’ve come to know the truth

You drew a picture of dead stone. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Mother, I’m Well

Mother, don’t be anxious about me

I am well, here in Guwahati.

I am at Jalukbari

With some colleagues

The abode where I stay

Is neither a hostel nor a mess.

I stay in the house of an aged man

It is a good house like that of ours

The roof is of a spate

The floor is muddy

The wall is made of bamboo.

We are nine colleagues.

Among them two are Bengali,

Two are Assamese,

Three are Hindustani

One is Oria

And the rest am I.

We differ in mother tongues

We are born in different places

Yet we think we belong to the same family

Born of the same mother

We have our food in the same oven

We sing songs in the same tone, we gossip under the same roof

We drink water from the same well

We sleep on the same mat.

We roam about together here and there round the city

We cross the Sharaighat on foot

We see the tigers; we see the lions and birds together

We joke together at the monkeys

We touch the horn of the rhino-

And feel how strong and how calm they are!

Mother, I am well here.

Don’t be anxious about me

We enjoyed the city of night

Everywhere it is lighted up by the electricity

As if the city of the night is a garland of flowers

Wherever we go we go together.

We laugh together, we make noise together,

How happy I am here, mother!

Mother, sometimes we feel sorrow enough

The previous day

Some Biharis are murdered willingly with a cold mind

By the Guwahatians.

The rest are ready to leave our Assam.

Mother, is this not their own land mother?

Yesterday I read in the paper:

A man by the name of Nabin has been kidnapped.

He had been a businessman

The kidnappers were the cadres of a group of terrorists.

Today I have heard that –

A college girl is badly raped by someone

The guilt is a man of police.

O, mother, here in Guwahati bombs also burst at broad day-light

And the rickshaw- driver, peddler, shopkeeper

And the vegetable-sellers get die.

That is why sometimes

We feel pain in our heart

Mother, bless us all-

That we can be man

Neither, Bengali, nor Bihari, nor Oria, nor Assamese. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Memory

If I get a hole in my busy life

I lean on the days of my past

And open up the pages of those moments

That I spent with you

And I remember-you wore the new saree of brown colour

How beautiful you seemed to me!

I remember the moments-

That we spent the evening roaming about the banks of the lake

The lake in whose bank you lost the moments of your childhood days

(You said so).

I remember the noise of your grave, deep laughter

I remember the gait of your dance,

And the melody of your song.

The page of the feast that I had

With you also come transparent to my eyes.

And then I lose myself in the diary of the past days.

All those memories are the now pictorial pages of history.

I read and reread the pages

When I get a hole in my busy life. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

I’ve Been Looking Up

I’ve been looking up the sky

Lest the messenger of Death is coming unto me

Splitting the black-white heaps of cloud

Every day the summon of Death has been coming

To the royal roads, public markets,

And to the gorgeous capitals.

The Angel of Death has been coming with all its might

To the forlorn cottages of the poor peasants

To the coal mines, to the foot-paths

The Angel of Death even comes out suddenly

In the dustbins beside the busy alleys with a deadly sound.

And tears off the flesh of children asunder,

The old and youth become its cruel victims.

I wish a death

A death, certainly a natural death

Hence I keep looking up the sky all the time

Day and night. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Her Message

I’ve no objection to loving you

If you’ve the ability to be my loved one

If you’ve a spacious saloon

To keep me with gorgeous ropes

An ultra-modern foreign-made cosy van

To roam about the busy city.

If you’ve pocket-full money

And a job in any government office

(But it will not be if you are a teacher)

I will never ask – how much your salary is

But you must pay me the amount I need

Without raising a question.

Besides these you must enter into an agreement:

Off and on you must leave me

You must go away from me

Or I will go away from you

So that I can enjoy freedom with my

Own moments, with my mates and with my likings

Where I can dance and lose myself with the waves of the day.

Then I’ll have no objection to loving you. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Fire

Everywhere is fire

The fire of water

The fire poured down from the sky

The fire broke out of the embankment of a stream of Tibet

The fire of the Manah being turned its course

The fire of darkness at night.

We are now in a raft of fire floating in the water

The fire of Death got death by the light of death

But this Fire differs from the fire of the oven

The fire of oven burns and makes ashes

This Fire burns but does not make ashes. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Question

Don’t write a letter

Enquiring me of my well and woe.

I have been living well

Like a dropped-off night jasmine

Or a withered tulip

Like a deer stuck by thorns.

I’ve been living like a dead fish floating on water.

I’ve been living like the skeleton discovered under the Pyramid.

My entity without you is like a dead corpse. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

My Dear Sun

I have only one garland of flowers

Whom would I sacrifice?

I know two gods can’t be worshipped in the same temple.

Hence is my instinctive sin against my will

I know certainly

It is my stigma in the name of becoming innocent

This intimacy is a battle against the night sky.

I have no other weapon

Except for only one bliss

Hence is my sin, my deceit, my love.

Now it is deep night

One by one the stars from the sky drop down

There is none to catch them tenderly

Perhaps the hearts of all are empty like that of mine.

In the sky of love

There is no beacon of light to guide my sin. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Dream

Yes friend, today I can reveal frankly

The talks of my pictorial days not known to others.

The talk of the foul nights

Shrouded by the drops of Arabian perfume.

Put your hands on my chest

You will feel-

I am dead already.

All that I utter breathe in and breathe out, make love

Formed of hard labour.

I have no joy of my own

All that I show is only my futile practice

To hide up the pathos of your corn-golden face.

Friend, certainly, I am defeated

And never will I be able to achieve victory.

On my palm, no new vein has grown up

Only the old veins have changed their courses

Hence I have no love.

The love that I show to you is only the old theory in a new frame

I have no desire to get more from you

So none can go into my inner me

My inner cells are empty

What I had has been devoured by you already. 0 0 0

None Should

None should commit the same sins

As I have committed

None should endeavour to build a world for his own

As I did.

Look at the world built by much pain

And care has been burning with flame.

The world replete with sorrow and woe is my dearer shelter.

I don’t need any new joy

The old pain is enough to enjoy ecstasy.

I hardly shed tears

For whom would I cry?

All the familiar faces have left already

Only their memories are with me

With the light of them, I have been living. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

How I Felt

Do you know- how I felt that day

When I got separation from you

The river of tears flew down like heavy rain

I took shelter on bed

Before the sun got set on the western horizon.

I could not feel-

When the night fell in to fill up my heart

With all the darkness of the night sky. 0 0 0

I Love You

You see that I keep my hand on you

And manipulate my fingers on your flesh

You see- I climb the hills,

And plow the plain

Have talks with you, kiss you

All are as if the hard striking of stones with stones

That produces fire-flame.

Yet is my easy lovemaking with you.

Yet I laugh with you

I love you with all your deceit

With your entire well and woe. 0 0 0

Dream -II

Come in and sit by me

Sit so near to me

That I can touch you with my breathing

I would like to see you with all my heart.

I would see your eyes,

Where the night stars twinkle with pride.

I would like to look at your cheeks

The cheeks scented with the perfume of jasmine.

I would like to enjoy your chins

Where all the honey of spring are stored

I would look at your forehead

Where drops of sweat glitter in the light of your eyes

I would not fail to notice your breast

Where the waves of all the seas play hide and seek.

I would like to handle your cloud-dark hair

The scent of which turns all the bees blind. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

It is Raining Heavily

It is raining heavily

Through the ears of the sky

And the lightning is in my heart.

Now I am sitting in silence

Shutting off my eyes

If I am poor-

Who is there to give away rays of light?

The door of the jail would be opened in time

Then the sun would enter into it at its will

To drive away the age-long darkness.

Who is there to get the victory?

I know well- victory comes to them

Who can welcome both failure and success with a smile. 0 0 0

Vain Glory

Zero,

And zero.

Zero

And some more zeros.

Zero,

Zero

And even many zeros

Can’t be equal to the length of a finger. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

The Image

How heavily it is raining

From that blue sky

Replete with clouds and clouds.

During the autumn sky

We met some white feathers

The robins were in full tone

That carried with her the miracle from yonder heaven

To quench my inborn thirst.

Now I am drunk with the endless blues of the firmament

Forgetting the mortal sorrows and sufferance. 0 0 0

The Wind

The wind is blowing

Carrying the fragrance of your hair

Through the courtyard of mine.

I am busy picking all the fragrance

Up to my narrow heart. 0 0 0

Deceit

Once you put your heart on me

I vouchsafed it in my bosom tenderly

But you burglar-

I did not come to know

Your heart was in disguise a hard stone

The weight of which buries me in mud

Who is there to lift me up? 0 0 0

Ego

Look at the hill

How firmly it is standing being proud of being green

The tall oaks have grown in lush

To hide up the coarse crag of its head

But the hills never feel, never think

For whom its pride is! 0 0 0

To My Beloved

Come in

Here I am to be cheated again and again

No hesitation

I will remain as ignorant as I had been

Kill me for your enjoyment.

I am ready to die again and again

Only for you, only for you. 0 0 0

A Lark Wept Bitterly

That night the mist fell down heavily

And hid off the twinkling of the stars.

A lark wept bitterly all night

Being lonely till the next morning. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Your Love

Your love is shrewder

Than my easy heart

Your smile is more enchanting

Than my mind can imagine.

Your eyes see

More than I can conceive.

Your heart is harder

Than my soft nail.

Your trick is sharper

Than a knife’s edge.

Hence are my sorrows, my sufferance and my woes. 0 0 0

My Sufferance

Love is the wave of the sea

That breaks away the stones of its ridge.

Love is the lightning of the summer cloud

That makes me afraid of my own entity. 0 0 0

My Poems

My poems are the flow of my blood

As red as cheery

As soft as the petal of a rose

As tender as the smile of the moon

As easy as tide and ebb-

Felt in the core of my heart

Hatched with the warmth of feeling

Beaten in the anvil of my brain

Dressed in rag

My poems are the images of my soul

The concrete statue of my abstract tears and smiles. 0 0 0

You Are For Me

You are for me

A figure painted on a piece of coarse hill

You are the easy words of my poetry

You are the fuel of my lamp

That keeps my life burning. 0 0 0

I Wished to Be

I wished to lose myself in your bosom

Being the throbbing of your chest

I wanted to bathe in the vapour of your respiration

I hoped to breathe in the fragrance of your sweat

I wished to be the laugher of your lips

I wished to be the black hue of your hair

I wished to be the smile of your silence

I wished to be the odour of your skin

I wished to be you! 0 0 0

Still Then

Still then

The melody of your song was ringing

In the petals of my bosom

When you departed from my life. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

The lost reminiscence is now a new song

It is ringing in the silence

In the cottage of my half-dead soul

Since our first acquaintance. 0 0 0

To Medona

My Medona

Till day

Of whose dream have you dreamt

Tell me

I would like to store it amid the dyes of the rainbow. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

They Say So

They say so:

Smiling and weeping

Weeping and smiling

Both are our inborn maids. 0 0 0

I’ve Nothing to Lose

I’ve nothing to lose

My heart?

It has been lost in yours forever.

Now I am as free as death

As numb as snow. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

She Came to Me

She came to me

With the calmness of the sky

With the liveliness of spring

With the sweetness of autumn.

The claws of my passion sipped up the juice of her desire

And grasped off her ear-ring.

We rubbed our chests against each other

And there produced the spark of fire.

In that light the secret mystery of the night

Got revealed

Along with our dark veins.

He smiled within her lotus-like chins

I also smiled within my swelling heart.

Rounding the beauty of our joy

Some stars from the far-off sky

Dropped down.

They have been glittering in our lap

Being a beacon of light.

We will be living some more days embracing this. 0 0 0

Your Gun

Your gun

That you bought from the open market of the new world

Is now prostrating on my feet.

Alas! If I had been born a century ago

We would have been men.

With a living soul. 0 0 0

When You Smile

When you smile

My poems get a life.

I am a harp

You are the tone to it.

I sing song

The far-off hills get the resonance

Thus my harp and your tone fill up the gap of our dark hearts. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

You May Have Your Saying

You may have your sayings

If you have something to say

Here I‘ve kept my ears deaf

My eyes shut up

I would like to listen to your sayings

With the ears and eyes of my heart

In this lovely, flowery spring. 0 0 0

Once

Once I composed new and new dreams

Rounding your image

And everyday

I broke them asunder with sorrow

Now I have ceased to do the same

As I’ve become a dream myself. 0 0 0

Still Then

I will go to you

Searching after my lost past

Don’t forbid me.

All my verses are absolutely mine

As your mysteries are absolutely yours.

You may get in me

What you’ve lost

If searched.

Let us get back our lost moments from each other. 0 0 0

Garland

You are the future of your future

Let you build it in the present

Let it be full of flowers

That would bear fruits being men in the days to come. 0 0 0

Again After This

Again after this

We will meet in this street

Though we are unacquainted to each other

In such a war-time,

But alas! By that hour we will be dead. 0 0 0

The Tender Love

The tender love of your laugh

Has opened a new horizon in the sky of my life

I am mad of getting the touch of your presence

I am mad of having a shade of your forest. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

To My Soul

Had I got only a sip of the kiss from you

I would have got life again

O, my soul

I am moribund without your bliss. 0 0 0

A Pen Without Ink

A pen without ink

May have a price

But certainly

It will have no history. 0 0 0

Lonely Entity

O sky, why are you there

Why is so deep silence?

Just like the heart of my beloved

Why are you so lonely like the entity of mine? 0 0 0

A Token

Alakesh had planted that oak tree

In the front courtyard of his home

All its leaves have dropped down

Except only the twigs.

His spouse keeps gazing at it all night

And reads the tale of her spring. 0 0 0

What

What will I write to you?

The poetic mornings are turned prosaic

For the sun rises up but with a veil

Say:

How would I see?

How would I write? 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

To You

I have put the cadence of my song in your heart

If you like

Give tone to it

If it annoys you

Let it be buried

I will never come to you searching after my life. 0 0 0

A Letter to Merina

Dear Merina,

Here I’m writing a letter to you after a long span of time.

In front of me, there is a vast sea of inundation.

The western wind has been giving birth to the great waves

The full moon has been dancing in joy being naked

The torrent of water is flowing under the tool I’m sitting on

The dear younger sister is catching fishes

Standing on the roof of the house

Some of our brothers have drifted away to the belly of the sea

Many of our houses are under the water

Our cattle have become the food of the sea fishes

Some people have taken shelter in the embankment of the river

Many of us have been engulfing the muddy water

to mitigate their hunger

We are moribund.

My grandmother has met her last whimpering for a piece of bread.

In such a state you must realize -how I am here.

It is a deep night now.

The rain is falling down continuously

The clouds are roaring with thunder and lightning

I am here on a twig of a tree

There is no fuel in the lamp nor a piece of candle to enlighten my cell

Here I am writing to you in the light of the moon.

Hope you are well.

Bless me –

That I can bear all these hardships with a smile.

No, Merina I am unable to continue my writing

The moon has been sinking in the water

And it is becoming darker

Than ever before.

Farewell, my dear Merina. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Fear

In the fields, there are the scripts of your feet

The paddy fields have taken a yellowish hue

It would ripe of late.

But alas! You have

But no dream of becoming a Hercules nor a Sophocles

You are as dead as you were in your birth. 0 0 0

Dead Earth

The previous night

My brother came

He talked of Revolution.

Today he will not come again

Because Revolution is no more living.

He, turning to the sky

Has been waiting upon the stars. 0 0 0

The Verses Make Us Cry

The verses make us cry in such a way

Just as Octavio Puz made his countrymen weep

In our spring there is no flower

But the desire of hankering after love

Has not been reduced.

Love is in the face

Love is in the shoes

Love is in our fear

Love is in the wings of the flying birds

Love is in the swelling breasts of the youthful girls

Yet poetry suffers from the pain of loneliness

As Neruda suffered, Larka did or Giyen experienced

Along the shores of solitary lakes. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Helen

O, you are the Queen of beauty, second Helen

You are my dear morning minion,

Adorned with all the glory of heaven

Pearls drop down in your every gait.

The beauty of the goddess of love, Lovelia

Will be a mean poor petty imitation,

You are my Monroe, my heart’s mania

Your image drives away my frustration.

It is true you are not poor in beauty

But never think that I’ll fight

Against nations and destroy Troy

To have thee though I’ve might. 0 0 0

To Octavio Puz

Octavio Puz

I have heard of your foot-steps

I have heard the pulsation of your breast

Shrouded well with a white shirt.

I’ve heard the throbbing of your veins

I’ve heard a story even about your big skull

I‘ve met you in the imageries of the sky and the green fields

In the simplicity of the voice of words

I’ve heard about you in the mouth of Mexico

Yester-night I came to hear:

You have met the great destiny

We are too poor to appreciate you

There you will be acquitted justly. 0 0 0

A Song

The dilapidated drum is in full tone

But I can’t sing a song

Yet I have struggled to recite

What my grandfather sang while he was young. 0 0 0

Fear- II

How enjoyable a dream becomes

If it is of love.

The flowers get bloomed

In its image.

But when the dream is of sorrow

Then the flowers faint and drop down. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

After Waking Up

After waking up

I’ve not met you

Hence I am tired

Being burnt of the fire of your absence. 0 0 0

For Your Love

All of a sudden

Your taciturn consent to my desire

Has fallen down

And in a moment I’ve become dead. 0 0 0

A Poem of Coming Spring

Now minute by minute

Approaches the spring to the courtyard of my heart

And the green paddy field is coming ahead

With all its haste

My obstinate mind count on:

If I pick them up in my heart

As I catch the rain-water on my palms. 0 0 0

Message

I’ve only one message to convey to you all

It is:

I say-don’t sell your brain

Like that of your predecessors’

As you sell and buy the cheap female flesh. 0 0 0

Far-off Desire

How beautifully the green wheat is swinging in the wind

As the cloud-black hair of my beloved swings in the summer breeze.

The green hills that you see

I’ve never visited them

I’ve never climbed up their craggy peaks

I’ve not happened to see

Whether they are bathed in snow or in fire

Hence is my wild desire. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

The Worm is Shrieking

The worm is shrieking:

Cring, cring, cring,

In its melody swings down the sky

As if a new Ariel of three days’ hunger

That feels of genuine emptiness in the lap of the motherland. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

What a Pain

My mother fondles me most

Yet till today

I am lonely.

What a pain!

What a sufferance in life without a mate!

What an agony of birth

In laugh also tears drop down

Like the dews at night. 0 0 0

At Deep Night

It is a flood of your tears

I can swim at wills

Like that of the clouds in the blue sky

At deep night. 0 0 0

Praise

Haiku, the Japan-born child

Your sighs are of

Trees, seas, rivers, and of loved ones

Laughs of union and the pains of separation. 0 0 0

This Deep Dark Night

This deep dark night

Burns the flames of my life

It burns and burns

And makes me conquer the second Troy. 0 0 0

There is a Cemetery

There is a cemetery

With lots of skeletons

And a herd of night foxes

Being tired of sucking them.

There is a gust of fickle wind

Busting out dreary laughter.

There is a dream girl

With a garland of flowers in her hand.

But the dream boy is far away from her. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Who Sings the Slogan

Who sings the slogan

Of redemption

Outside the prison?

Throughout the thirty springs

They are shrieking aloud

Holding the hands upward.

There is but no rebel

Against those who are outside the prison. 0 0 0

For Freedom Again

Have you not heard of

The invocation of

Lachit the great

To Sharaighat?

Have you not heard

The pathetic weeping of our mother

On a desolate night?

Have you not heard of Kanaklata

Who took up the bullets of the gun into her breast

For our freedom?

Have you not heard of Maniram Dewan

To sacrifice his soul for our soul?

If you’ve heard

Then why do you don’t come out

With a red flag in your hand

For our freedom? 0 0 0

As There is Life

There is pain, sorrow and sufferance

As there is life.

As there are the Earth, men and the stars

There is a struggle.

As there is life.

There is life

As there are hopes and despair

There is love, fraud, light and darkness.

There are tide and eve. 0 0 0

I Had Kept Your Name

I had kept your name in the storehouse of my memory

Many a day

Because there is life

There is desire

There is hope

There is a rainbow

Now I’ve known

Life refers to moments full of drops of tears and laughter. 0 0 0

O Beloved

O beloved

Look at the sky-

Is it bright or dark?

Come if it is dark and the path is lonely

Come to me

I shall be waiting for the whole dark night.

Only to weep with you

And to celebrate the centenary of our separation. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

The Hoary Herd of Hopes

The hoary herd of hopes

Fly from earth to sky

From sky to earth

And even beyond the limits of the horizon

And build the colorful skyscrapers

I keep looking at them and cry

For being wingless

For being lonely in such a sweet spring. 0 0 0

Who Appreciates

Now-a-days the hills speak

And fight the fear

And exchange the words of the poets

And the melodies of the minstrels.

But who is there to listen to

Who is there to appreciate

The depth of wound? 0 0 0

Your Face

Your face is more beautiful

Than the glow of the full moon

The storm of the sea

Sweeps away the scent of your hair

How can I lie awake

Such a tragic night? 0 0 0

Dead Fishes in Float

From cells to cells of

A deterred life

Reflects the scar of my heart

The heat of the sun

Burns again and again

And burns the civilization of the night.

The black smoke of the chimney

Can’t enlighten the dark cells lost in light.

In salty water

We are dead fishes in float. 0 0 0

There is

There is also blue sky

There is also the drunken dark night

There is withered yellowish dawn

There is the burnt odor of gun powder

There is the sunk-down sun

There is a silvern moon with bloody face

There is a cannibal.

There is poetry

There is deadly poverty

As there is a king. 0 0 0

I’m in a Heaven

I live in a heaven

Where there is nothing but your warm reminiscence

And only an eve flowing river

In its bank, there is a tree.

In the morning –

I see the tree is replete with green leaves

At noon –

I see it is naked without leaves

But when the night falls in it disappears.

Every day I ask the tree-

How old is it?

The tree replies-

I’ve not born till now.

I am still in the womb of my mother

Every time it replies with the same answer

Which I hardly believe. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Song

Night

Day

Altogether we will recite the song of separation

You will play on the violin

And I will sing the song.

Otherwise, you will sing a song

I will play on the violin.

Again autumn will change its melody

Winter will change its course

And then our misunderstanding will come to an end. 0 0 0

Separation

You’ve been going away from me

And the desert has begun to weep

You’ve been going away from me

And the wind has begun to sing the song of mourning

And with you, the sky above me has been running away.

You’ve been going away from me

To another world-unknown, unacquainted to me

You are going away –

You will have been going away throughout the whole futurity

But alas! You’ve left your heart upon that of mine

Now say-

How can I bear

The weight of your heavy heart? 0 0 0

I’ve Never Seen Her Crying

I’ve never seen her crying

Though I often heard-

If she cries – pieces of pearls drop down

Through her eyes

I am so much forlorn that

I’ve not touched even a piece of stone

Once she used to frequent to me

Both at day and at night

Then I always saw her smiling.

When she smiles

The lotus bloomed in my heart.

Now she has changed her course to some other world

And the lotus has ceased to bloom in my heart. 0 0 0

Immortality

Let us render immortality to the Lake

Not throwing a sharp look at it

Not wandering along its banks

Not praising its transparent blue water.

Let us render it immortality

Bathing in it, swimming in it and drowning in it

Like modern Triton and Proteus. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Triton-II

When I was a little child

I could hardly pronounce a word or two

Then a scholar in the Greek mythology

Said to me one day:

Triton is the symbol of fear and treasury

Never pronounce their names even in dreams.

When I became a college student

My teacher told me:

Triton is a sea-god in Greek mythology.

It has a head like that of a man

And its lower part is like that of a fish.

It always carries with him a harp made of the skin of cell-fish.

Now I’ve come to an age

And learned through reason that

What they taught me was wrong. 0 0 0

When I Meet You

When I met you for the last time

You were then floating with the wind

On the other side, a being was standing steady like a mountain

(Had you known the woes of a hill!)

In your tired face, there was a smile

The cry of sorrow came out in the disguise of laughter

In the fringe of your clothing, there was the scent of my breathing

You would feel all –

In the solitary morn, at hot noon, at deep night and at dawn.

In the dead night, you would wake up all of a sudden

And your heart would break down in despair.

The cuckoo will sing a song in your breast

And make you weep louder.

Your tears would change their hue,

The tone of your crying would change its melody.

The pain of separation would make you eccentric.

I saw you for the last time coming down the stairs

And I was climbing up as a lonely mountaineer.

To me once you had been so dear. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

I See Better in the Dark

: When the darkness goes away, visit me.

: Do you think- the darkness would go away?

: Yes, I think so.

: Maybe you are in hallucination!

: There is the least possibility of going the darkness away.

: What have you thought?

After a while, the moon of the night will rise in the sky.

: Can the moon remove the darkness of the heart?

: The moon can’t remove the darkness of our heart

But sure, it can drive away the darkness of the street.

: Then it is better. What is there to be afraid of?

: Let the moon rise up

Let the darkness of the night go away

Let me go through the road shrouded by darkness

I see better in the dark. 0 0 0

A Tale

: Do you like gossiping?

: No, but I like to listen to tales.

: Till today how many tales have you heard?

: I listen to stories every day.

: Would you tell me one?

: Certainly not, I don’t like to tell tales.

: Yet, I demand one from you.

: Then I can tell you one.

But what is the gain of it?

: Does anybody listen to stories for a profit?

I think people listen to tales for amusement.

: Only for amusement!

Then I will say, you are the cruelest of all.

: Why?

: In a tale, there is blood, murder, treasury, poverty,

Rape, kisses, bites and both tears and laughter.

Do you like all these?

: Certainly not.

: Then why do you desire to listen to a tale?

: I would like to hear a story in your mouth

Because I love you. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

For Love

I will be giving you sufferance

From the very primitive period of our love-making.

Sometimes I would keep telling you the unutterable tales.

So that you can lie in bed and weep.

I will abuse you with the insane words

So that you can make your eyes full of tears.

Sometimes I will return home from my workshop

So that you can be bored of waiting.

Sometimes I would stealthily leave you in bed

To wander about the banks of the solitary lake.

When I return I will bring two handful rays from the stars

And poke them into your breast

Then you will get startled.

And in fear embrace me with all your love. 0 0 0

To My Patrons

My dear readers

If you had not been my patrons

The Muse in me would have been dead

As dead as the skeletons of my forefathers.

My dear readers-you are the Jupiter of my garden

You bless me with the rains of love,

With the hues of the rainbow and keep me living

Bless me that I can serve you for all my life

Being a true slave of mankind. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

Time and Tide

There was a time

People thought:

We are the sub-ordinate to Nature

She guides us as she likes

She moulds us after her will

She makes us laugh, she makes us cry

She makes sports with our woes.

We are the puppets in the hand of Nature

She can burn us as the primitive people

Burnt the flesh of dead animals for food.

She can kill us by freezing us in cold

She can drift us away as the tsunami does

She is like a whimsical monarch of the Middle Ages.

Who can hew us asunder with a laughing face?

Of late people have come to learn:

Nature is our mother

Who suffers all her life

To keep her children amid peace and abundance. 0 0 0

I’ve Come to Know You

I have come to know you

But it is too late

You are like Proteus of the Greek mythology

If you reveal your true form

You are just like an old man

He tells tales to his grandchildren

And mesmerizes them for long

Showing them that fair is foul and foul is fair

Though all his tales are born of air. 0 0 0

The Lost Reminiscence

The Tradesman of Love

I often used to go to them

They were the tradesmen of love

Every night I went to them and bought some love

Every night after being returned

I come to realize:

I remained the same as I was before I went to them.

Thus many a spring has been lost

Now I’ve become a tradesman myself

And sell love everywhere!

As I frequented the tradesmen

So many have taken to frequent me

I sell love to them

They buy the dreamy pack of love and retreat

When they reach home- they also come to realize

They are as they had been before they bought love.

Time will pass on

And people would discover:

In the business of love, everybody deceives everybody. 0 0 0

To Merina

Dear Merina,

Excuse me, I wish you all peace and happiness.

No More.

Menonimus.

N.B. Merina, listen to. I know all the stars in the sky. Of course, I don’t know the names of all of them. During my childhood, I thought if I could get them on my palm! But when I grew up, I came to know — the stars are very very big, impossibly big, even bigger than our earth. Hence I think, let the stars remain in the lap of the sky. The stars seem pleasing from so far. Remain in peace.

Merina, again: Excuse me. 0 0 0

*The End*

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