Poem by Anish Bhattacharyya

 

A Dusk by the Sea

The fisherman said, someone died

Yesterday. The sea has taken someone

Of his own kind. There will be mourning

In the evening and a voyage the next morning.

 

An old man with drooping eyes

Was offering some flowers to the sea.

His white hair rustling across his face,

And the breeze from the cloudy foamy sea.

 

The hawk was flying but it did

Not move. As if arrested by the sea,

Afraid not of the roaring waves,

It kept looking for its tree.

 

A family of dogs kept barking,

Their echo undiminished by the sea.

They kept on jumping as the waves broke

While retreating towards the sea.

 

The wet sands seemed dead,

Produced nothing but mounds of salt;

However during every night,

The crabs in their sandy graves halt.

 

Amidst this microscopic fauna

There was a little girl who played;

The white waves encircled her,

As she bowed and collected sea-shells.

She stepped on the heart of sand,

Yet they did not complain,

The waves rushed to kiss her feet,

To liberate the earth from pain.

She looked back every time,

To see the trail of footprints,

She never found what she was looking for,

And kept on collecting sea-shells.

The sea mist like a winter robe,

Concealed the secrets of the sea.

It reached the sea shore, hiding

The little girl in a mysterious veil of ecstasy.

 

Upon the cliffs stood a lighthouse,

Trying to peep into the deep sea;

The light reached the four corners,

And failed to illuminate the dark sea.

 

It was dark again, with an incomplete moon,

I heard the tinkling of her anklets on the shore,

There was a scent of flower in the moist air,

And some white petals on the sea floor.



Anish Bhattacharyya has completed his masters from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and is currently pursuing his PhD at Visva Bharati University.

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