I pick up what is left of me.
All day I’ve cut myself and bled.
Suddenly the world is at war:
Everywhere I step is a mine-field,
Everything is wrapped in barbed wires.

I sit in front of my window, pause.
The trenches have taken their toll.
The skirmish has gone too long.
My old Enfield has proved useless,
And I could never use the bayonet.

In my pocket beats your letter.
I have carried it all day, knowing.
It rests, like a grenade, against my heart.
You said nothing: but the dusk spoke
With a sadness akin to your voice;

I know what it says, but I wait.
One last long puff… I pull the pin.

Diptesh Ghosh

The seed of grief has found a way
Into my heart;
Darkness waits, like a winter night,
Lurking, waiting;

Just when I make peace with darkness
You smile at me,
Unexpectedly, in the darkness
A lighted window.

Diptesh Ghosh

If we were in love
And the government, in all their wisdom,
Banned all conversations altogether
A vast silence would reign
In smoky coffee halls and crowded streets…
Silent like libraries;

There would be no way
Of speaking of forbidden things except
For writing them down in letters:
Every day I would send
Pages detailing out your smile, my love,
Your beautiful dark eyes;

But if the jealous bureaucrats
Rationed the use of words, limiting spends,
I would still write only to you
One by one, till all words,
Like precious bank balance ran out slowly,
Like sunlight in winter;

Even then I would not quite stop.
I would send you these blank sheets of paper.
Every day, till the last of days:
If they took the sheets away
My parched lips shall move silently
Narrating to the wind;

And my love shall be written in blank sheets.
Only the wind and you
Will know what they say.

Diptesh Ghosh

A continent breaks up slowly
And imperceptibly;

Life is an album of old photographs,
The prints are faded and dull.
If only they could make a fresh copy…
But the negatives are long gone.

Questions lurk where answers lingered.
They smile with uncertain eyes.
The wine tastes unusually sour,
And the cigarette smoke is stale.

The stars above waiting, knowing.
The two listen to the silence
Grasping for something to say
But they have nothing. Alas.

The furiously beating heart
Was nothing more than a moment:
The house was built on a cliff
The cliff was toppling, slowly.

Diptesh Ghosh

When I go to the woods
I do not write “I was here”
On the bark of some tree;
I do not leave plastic bags,
Or cups and beer bottles
To commemorate my stay;

It is enough that I see
Unobtrusively, for a while,
The forest aflame in autumn,
As white water rushes down
The green ancient mountains
Under a benign blue sky;

I do not need too much more:
The deer will graze again,
Here where I stand watching;
The daisies will grow quietly,
And rain will fall on this meadow
When I leave without a footprint;

So it should be with my life.
Too much value is given
To the quest for permanence;
I shall be like the summer wind
That passes through the woods
Invisible but scented:

It shall not matter when I’m gone.
But I shall be glad to have seen
All this beauty, and these woods,
Though briefly, ah so briefly.

Diptesh Ghosh

In the quiet lake of my heart
I heard a poem flap its wings.
It nested on the shallow edges
Stirring its dark tranquil waters;

It would not stay, it flew away.
So I wrote your name on a sheet
And cast it like a paper boat
On the deserted waters:

There it still floats, like a swan,
Elegant and undisturbed,
Far more perfect and complete
Than any poem I ever wrote.

Diptesh Ghosh

August

A rain drop still lingers
On the tip of a green leaf
Long after the dark clouds
Have dispersed from the sky;

Like the drop that shimmers
In the corner of your eyes,
Silent, out of season, and beautiful;

March

The first leaf breaks free, quite unnoticed,
Like the first boy back in school
After a particularly long vacation;
Soon the quiet hills will resound
With the cries of those yet to come
The forest that is yet to wake;


December

Steaming tea in hand I watch
The wind blow through the green valley
Singing a tune that must resonate
With the young saplings of oak and Birch:

They sway and flutter fiercely.
They shake and tumble with the wind.
If they were not rooted,
They too would fly.

Diptesh Ghosh