Early morning
After a sleepless night
Of thunderstorms and shrieking winds;
Now this clear dawn, the empty roads,
This sleeping world:
The orange ball rises, shyly,
Turning the snow-white peaks red,
Lighting the green valley
That lies ripe with yellow mustard.

Utterly beautiful,
Quite impossible
That such loveliness exists.

I am greedy.
I have this strange yearning
For an off-season mango,
And your presence;
The mango months
Are half a year away,
And you and I
Are forever split by the bounds
Of customs and propriety.

But this is a make believe world.
I find you by my side,
Laughing at my mango fondness;
You ask me, sleepy eyed,
If I too find such dawns lovely:
I answer, tongue-in cheek,
With a warm smile,
“Impossibly so”.

Diptesh Ghosh

Nothing lands here anymore
Except swallows and sparrows:
The fields cannot remember
The last airplane that landed
On what was once an airport.

The runways have slowly yielded
Inch by inch, every corner,
To hungry weeds and silent woods;
The tufts of coarse September grass
Have reclaimed most of the land.

The wind blows through the wild grass.
Twittering larks have replaced
The cough of busy engines;
Only wild flowers and prickly weeds
Bear testimony to this change.

In the overgrown sal thickets
An owl proclaims what is obvious:
Nothing really was meant to last.
In the end there’s always change.
And that is fair compensation.

Diptesh Ghosh

And so it comes to this: the end of days,
The sum of starlit nights and rain-washed years
I spent with friends who lie stone dead in fields
Of Troy. My faithful Andromache waits
With Astyanax, my son: I wish my stay
Would last one summer more; to see him grow,
To lie with her in balmy autumn nights,
And rest in fields where Golden barley grows.

But Achilles waits: no war is ever just,
And he is young, a boy who seeks his fame,
He does not understand my love for life.
The gods have foretold this: but I will not
Take shelter behind walls. I see old death;
He waits for me. What can a mortal do
When gods take sides, and all our years are bound
In dice that fates have rolled; and now death waits.

As long as mankind exists, Achilles wants
His name to last, but I just want to live
In peace, to tend my goats and watch the sun
In lands where neither men nor gods seek blood;
But Achilles waits: and death is waiting too.
And all my yesteryears have led to this:
This field, this god-infested ground, and I
Wait sword in hand for death: I am ready.

Diptesh Ghosh

Two scholars discuss life in a gray library.
They dissect beauty into precise compartments,
They speak softly of fleetingness of time.

Outside a breeze is blowing through green paddy fields.
A clump of wild flowers have blossomed early.
A goatherd lies in the grass with nothing to do.

Time is passing fast in the dusty libraries.
But in green fields Time lingers, half in love with spring.

Diptesh Ghosh

Something in dusty corners of my heart
Seems to have lost its sting: the broken dreams
That haunted me so long, all sorrows old,
Those regrets have disappeared. Once again
My life is filled with promises of things:
I hear the footsteps of joys yet to come.

The world is still the same, I know; the flaws
Still run in me. But I cannot shake off
This happiness that clings to me so long
Like your lavender smell. It’s raining now
And you are coming here: a brand new poem
Is walking towards my long-waiting heart.

Diptesh Ghosh

A late September day
Under a perfectly blue sky
The restless wind ravels
The yellow leaves of Maple
As they fall gently on the ground.

I see no one around:
The pastured fields lie bare,
And the roads are empty.
Somewhere in the dark woods
A nameless bird breaks into a song.

Between the barren rocks
A clump of tiny weeds
Have sprouted to bright life;
And in the horizon,
Rows and rows of dark evergreens.

My heart suddenly aches
With a deep yearning for something:
Despite all the losses,
I cannot but be glad,
On this wind-swept autumnal day.

Diptesh Ghosh

Your thoughts have drifted into my heart
Like the first clouds in the eastern skies,
Moist with fragrance of the distant rains.
The summer was long: the thirsty roots
And the babbling brooks have dried up
Like green dreams, withered in the sun.
I know these dark clouds will not burst forth
As chattering rain on my window-panes;
But the day is dark, and I seek darkness.
Lightning streaks the sky with a promise,
To fall with unrestrained joy one day:
Not here, not now, but someplace else.
Diptesh Ghosh