A midnight shriek or sudden bang
Disrupts the thread of tales,
Entangled in unconscious mind
With sounds of lashing flails.

Wherefrom it comes, whither it goes?
I threw my eyes up there,
The eerie void soon called me up
To trudge down through the stair.

Where does it end? it takes me down
Where lamps of darkness blaze,
That shrouds my home with hazy mist,
As in cold wintry days.

Is this my home? where are the things
That held I dear one day?
The ringing bell has changed the course
And changed the earthly way.

A clanging plate, a metal bait,
It beckons torpid limbs,
It makes a sleep, unmakes it too,
And plays with wondrous whims.

Has she returned, are these her steps?
They tap and knock and go,
The shadows come and fly along,
But never wreak a row.

The shades arise, it oft defies
The law of natural science,
Until the leaves rub veins and ribs,
On frail decrepit lines.

The window rails feel slithering fume,
So do the stanchions all,
The lights do fade, the balustrade
Invites a downward fall.

A pale blue fire, seen yet unseen,
Here calls on everyday,
When grief or mirth gives serene birth
To purple streaks of ray.

Thus with the fume I once resume
Move up the stair again,
No shrill this time could sever off
That story-tangling chain.

Look out and see the gory cloud,
The sun has sneaked behind,
It peeps and pokes, with crafty strokes
Revives the cloud reclined.

The rain has ceased, but not deceased,
Returns it back again,
A thunder hoarse lashed down its force,
With horrid, horrid rain.

A blue yet crimson cover moves,
As skies release the face,
Of pale and fatigued twilight sun,
That lost a vital race.

It's not a sun that we may know,
For it abodes a harm,
An evil omen for certain,
That violates its term.

Within a day, on western bay,
It showed up twice today,
And once on eastern shores it went,
So thrice it made foray.

The dark grey wall of earth's surface,
That heavy gloomy bowl,
Transfers my eyes to a different place,
Therewith my hapless soul.

This place I have not ever seen,
Oh no, where have I gone?
Slide off the window glass and see,
It poured down on and on.

But lo behold, it's cold indeed,
The men are white and pale,
Is that a tree, dead yet it tries
To cling the fallow frail.

The same old floor I trod upon,
I think I have not moved,
Or is this true, all is in one,
And everywhere I'm grooved?

A light and windy humid air,
Has brought me up the door,
It's her, it's her, my visions blur,
With that I upward soar.

The tuneful music still is heard,
Someone has stole the chord,
I see nowhere that bluish flair,
I hated yet adored.

Has it converged with nightly sphere?
No long that warmth I feel,
Was it cold death that ravaged faith,
And butchers human will?

No more my limbs so light appears,
My knees are bent and stiff,
The soulful pleasant pain departs
With just a rapid whiff.

The love of fear, and fear of love,
Enrich a timid thought,
The injured mind oft wants respite,
From vapid light unsought.

An unseen shift, a playful rift,
Revamps my timeless tales,
Split in future, past and present
Lost in unconscious dales.

I dreamt a dream of Rebecca,
As if she drew anear,
It was a dream filled with profound
Forgotten love and fear.

That was a joyful day I know,
We talked and played and sang
Within the spacious airy rooms;
Somewhere a church bell rang.

There all day long we ran and laughed,
And lovely words exchanged,
We plucked and ate our favourite fruit,
A wholesome lunch arranged.

Beside the casement long we stood,
And we beheld a stream,
Whose water made a ringing sound,
I heard in a sweet, sweet dream.

The evening breeze played with her locks,
That moved and swayed and flew,
And on her cheeks the moonbeams fell,
The evening breeze still blew.

She told me of her ancient home,
More ancient than this fort,
She could continue, unless a bat
would screech, her flow abort.

Down from the rafter he emerged,
Flew past the corridor,
His shiny eyes gleamed in the dark,
His ***** the silence tore.

We stood there still, we could not move,
A certain fume engulfed
Our eyes and mind, full numb we stood;
Meanwhile a wild hound barked.

I want to tell what happened then,
Although my brain betrays,
All the strange shapes men have not seen,
Did tame us and amaze.

A sudden noise, a ghastly noise
I heard, it broke my trance.
The buoyant soul of Rebecca
Off went, departed once.

Down from the terrace steep she fell,
She danced three years ago,
The sudden thud that ceased her breath,
Ceased her blood to flow.

Exhaustion brings forth emotional happiness,
Ephemeral drug-induced exhaustion gives time enough to recall what is lost
during the noisy turmoil of cobwebby mind.
Silent is the room, a round robust room,
safely peregrinated around by Ferdinand Magellan.
I imagine how impaccably resilient is the barrier – a bony barrier of body contains an intermittent ruction,
the turbulence of nothingness.
Then comes a thin cutaneous membrane all over the body, potent to conceal an absolute abyss.
Envy does not provide with comfort.
A spiffing news spreads faster than rumour. Here I sit, sleepy and carefree, to imbue my vein with your pleasure. The pleasure of the universe attacks and multiplies like a contagious disease; An opaque streak of burnt hope appears, disappears,
disappears and appears in the guise of pleasure, whom we craved.
It's nothing more than a deceptive premonition of healing.
Let him convalesce who is meek and naive. These be my final words before another fit of unknown trepidation begins.


– Sarban Bhattacharya

Between the eyes and on the temples,
the untold things in detail,
are engrafted in the language of pain,
sprung from the involuntary locomotion of thoughts.
The ghastly moments in horror stories I read
in childhood become innocuous and comforting.
They come and disappear into
the disorderly paraphernalia of guilt
and sinfulness, typical of the young minds,
embracing a horrific algorithm
spun around nights and days, and days and nights.
Very many things rave and rampage into there–
they knock and pull and strain and hurt
in restive sleep of howling gusts and gales.
How long will the storms numberless rankle it?
These are not futile cravings– cease,
CEASE the ruction of this smallest land, yet
as enormous as the volume of the universe;
moving or what?
Lull the sleepless pupils on the hearth, lead them
to the lush and tranquil island.
Is a fabled nowhere your resort? How will the
crumbling sinews react to this? I rose and found
a noisy market, where plies a train everyday,
vague and vacant.

The petal of your earlobe undisturbed by the locks ,
As of Eve, whose nightly charm was
Increased by stately Eden;
Soft air and the fortunate surface
Beneath you, are happy.
There your neck, half invisible, awaits a silent speaker on the skin.
No sound is heard, save a melody emerging from your mouth, unconscious, sweet as a summer bird's song.
God is pleased to see us, His children, exultant, without transgressing His laws.

           ---- Sarban Bhattacharya

The earth might know whether the fire
Beneath the hillock as a pyre
Was there and kept a-smouldering
Whatever burnt it with fiery sting.

From morning did he slowly, oh!
Acute and heavy stones below
Clasp with his own holy wrath,
A power ne one had ne now hath.

Though he’s been slumb’ring innocently
Since hundred years ago, sharply,
As I had heard from my ancestors,
Got furious by some evil stars.

It was a foggy day of autumn,
None could be seen at the bottom,
Nor high above a bird to fly,
Nor that hill, then calm and high.

When the pale sun reached the top,
Of earthly dome of clouds did rob
His grandeur boldly, the rain began
To curse the man with wicked plan.

Till then no one conjectured what
God had stored for their hapless lot,
But dreamt bygone months when they
Were carefree as a child and gay.

Once the sun was lost in the west,
Some eerie sounds from that hill-crest
Began to frighten children, and their
Unhappy parents uttered a prayer.

One wondered if it was a rumbling
Of the clouds, about to be tumbling
Once again as heavier rain
Upon grey mountains and verdant plain.

Another heard the rustling leaves,
As summer’s cool wind gently heaves.
But no such things were their outside,
Then must’ve in high note an infant cried.

That voice, as night seemed deep and darker,
Bit by bit, from grave to graver
Became, and did from the hill emerge.
All cravens shrieked, they shrieked, “O dirge!”


All at once in mightiest blast,
Liquid fire did up the crust
Gush out, flash out from the earth,
As if he gathered an endless mirth.

Then down that splendent stone did flow
With million captive crumbles, lo!
The brooklet virile made its way
Through forsaken woods and clay.

Hearth! A hearth of our whole world
That dormant knoll was like; he hurled
The hallowed fire, which God alone
Could gift mankind, with new adorn.

What rapture did the hill derive
Unburd’ning himself of newer life!
And what unwavering faith had he
In earth on whose lap his child would be!

Fair Angels of Olympus, Muses Nine,
That on its snowy summit gay recline,
With other gods and haply the cynosure
Of poets whom inspires your sacred ewer,
O'erflowed with the ambrosial Hippocrene,
The haunt of daughters of Mnemosyne,
And Father Jove who loves these nymphets most,
And of that gelid crest th’ immortal host.
Apollo, son of Jove, gives company
To your glad song of heaven’s euphony;
There to his lyre flourish unfettered throats
That bear the truest art through truest notes.
When sing ye graceful goddesses amidst
The brood of Saturn’s mighty son in feasts,
May gladden the heart of children of the plain
As well who in summer nights hearken you fain.
I heard that music mild betwixt the glades,
‘Twixt valleys old till with the breeze it fades,
Amongst the rustling youthful Aspen leaves,
From bough to bough its tender beauty weaves.
On warbler’s throat ye happy strains do pour,
Above the groves as o’er the mountain soar
They with their pinions unweary and suave,
Dispenser of all art ye fain observe.