Calcutta beckons me
In familiar names,
Calls me close in the midst of anonymous crowd
On an intense, familiar bent,
I fall back on its stones.
The crop-thick soil of Bengal seems to shiver
As I tread
Its roads,
I get back in its sky once more
The long-lost maze of dim trees
The creepers and wild flowers on entranced moments
An intoxicating odour, a distant voice,
My rural Bengal returns, for ever returns
In Calcutta.
I heard a cry in a hut long ago
At dusk or at dawn,
In the whistling wind by the stagnant pool,
As if that sobs in the cradle of Calcutta;
The laments of desolate fields
Thicken and touch the top of the high-rises,
The bylanes quake
As if the eerie road of the cemetery
Comes to an end after so many miles
In Calcutta.
I saw the smile of ripe grains
In the lips of old men,
And gleams of light,
In the fair for children
That sparkles
All on a sudden
In Calcutta.
The doors I left behind
All put out one by one,
They rekindle again
In slums or in domes,
I know that lamp of love,
The anguished gazing,
The wave of emotions that overreached the fringe
Or shook very often the courtyard and the coconut grove,
Hindered and futile, yet with another pledge
That riot break forth
In stony Calcutta.
In Calcutta my friends
Overwhelm me,
They raise the curtain before me,
I get absorbed in their unforgettable words,
They rouse my life,
They intensify hatared,
Intensify anger,
Intensify love,
They ask me to keep the pure fire one,
To burn envy in that fire,
To fling puny minds like garbage into it.
Those their gestures
Paint my future in the beams of light
Shedding off my oblivion
They reawaken the morning birds of my life.
The frantic odour, the flowery water
Our excursions along the wild paths of the rural Bengal.
Calcutta comes very close to me
I feel her in my pulse,
Her voice reverberates from Terai to Sagar Island
And rings in my heart beat.
(Arun Mitra)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, Life Poems, Light Poems, Fairness Poems, Cry Poems, Fire Poems, Smiling Poems, Morning Poems, Anger Poems, Emotions PoemsBased on Keywords: creepers, rekindle, bengal, excursions, unforgettable, reverberates, calcutta, coconut, intensify, reawaken, sagar