Selected Poems of Partha Mukhopadhyay

Three Verses on Our History

Verse 1 – Early Hominids

The third ape-shadow emerged, baby-curious,

From the primitive Mormon-mist.

A lucent moon watched

As ape-gene glowed, mutating with every touch.

Left alone at daybreak

Soul-light dazzled the primate mind

And the first divine thought of the universe

Contaminated all pure beasts

In one massive cloudburst

Saying

“I love”.

Verse 2 – Hello

When nature took over

The elegant game of man and woman

The elevator-air collapsed into one suffocating lump

And custom stood no chance.

Verse 3 – Parting

Will you forget me, love me, or hate me?

No, yes and yes – I had said.

Perhaps a little tentatively,

Because love is,

By the very nature of the beast,

So.

 

Son of God

I thought someday my time would come,

I’d throw whole galaxies at the imbecile

That has never seen pain.

But in the hollow of darkness, I sit, spent,

As the magician claps,

“Let there be light, again”.

Go die on that cross, he says.

***

Thorns on my head,

On my face a piercing sun-beam,

Smell of death mingles with wafting hate,

Friends with passion in their eyes drive nails through my body

I try to scream

My tongue is pulled

Until the swirling blood in my soul is seen.

Broken bones play rat-ta-tat if I move

Better to go cold, very cold, but…

Resurrection snatches me from sleep’s gate.

***

I have drawn sunflowers with my blood

Voices, grotesque dream-innards, speak to me

Gunpowder sucks yellow sickening paint from my veins

Someday people will love this madness, Theo, you’ll see.

***

Sunflowers wake me up

On my favorite teetering-twig, I look around with tiny, round eyes

My wings flutter in the short, happy breeze of noon

Sundown comes, riding memories of distant strife.

I smell smoke in the air

I hear people screaming for blood

I see a cross

I cry.

***

I am a butterfly,

Son of God.

 

Shellfish

Being a shellfish was easy for such a selfish thing

Having found a natural hiding place

After gliding across the emptiness of a dark, dreamy

Space.

Dolphins, being the designated intergalactic thinkers,

Fancied it,

And, perhaps, in the optimism of finding a bride,

Imagined it to be

Female.

Though strictly speaking

The shells hid something they had not seen, ever,

In the whole expanse of the waters –

Just a blob of darkness,

Invisible.

Curiosity won in the end,

One day a lustful male dolphin,

Going against the custom of the tribe,

Nudged the gorgeous shells open

And found, apparently,

Nothing.

It is said in the sea folklore

That was the day

When the first sad dolphin

Was born.

 

Love – interpreted

When she looked deep into my eyes

And held my gaze with twin emeralds

Glistening

And said “I truly love you”

This strangest thought came to my mind.

Mercenaries will never be freedom fighters

Because they will give lives for the thrill

Or the money

Sometimes even for a simple bet

But not for honor

Which is a useless word in

The paid fighter’s arsenal.

Kids display the same level

Of detached affinity

To toys.