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Tamal Kundu Dec 2016
I

School bag, blue shirt, hair parted on the right,
Daal-rice, clock ticking away in delight;
Cycles stop, wagons with seasonal crop,
Get to her class before the gates shut tight.

II

The obsession froths beyond the eavesdrop,
Secrecy brews a moral of Aesop;
Friends don't yet know, the fear that the eyes show,
Grows the need to shout it from the rooftop.

III

Geography is boring, the maps tow
Useless details such as where's Kosovo;
It's all pretense, the absorption intense,
But her attention sets the world aglow.

IV

The wistful heart struggles to make some sense
And accept pain at misery's expense;
Then her comment, and the motives ferment,
The surging tide sweeps over the heart's fence.

V

Evening is drunk with sunlight, the day's spent,
Menthol erases the cigarette scent;
She fades from sight, the mundanities write,
A long ride back under the clouds' intent.
Form: Rubaiyat
Tamal Kundu Dec 2016
Framed by mankind her voice turned raw.
For toxins had tainted ambrosia
and festered in her child to gnaw
framed by mankind; her voice turned raw
in grief for deaths to come. She saw
in court why she must fight inertia.
Framed by mankind her voice turned raw
for toxins had tainted ambrosia.
Form: Triolet
Because adulteration of something as basic for human survival as milk is a problem in this part of the world.
Tamal Kundu Dec 2016
Crackling mischief waxes every moon; Moon, the plaited devil
Three harvests blue, summits everest shelf to scrape out crunchy
Bliss, and scurries away, with exasperated steps in tow.
For my niece, Monoshree (Moon, for short)
Form: Light Poetry
Tamal Kundu Dec 2016
Her silent steps the night takes,
ink-stained fingers sculpt erotica:
She is the child of disillusionment.
Crooked smile hears the words outside her head-
within reach, but not quite.

The mirrors in her room reflect
the kohl of her achievements;
she is a stream long run dry
in desperation for agriculture.

The cigarettes blister her lips
in the careless moments of broken shards;
she is the firefly caught in the summer storm,
beckoning lights have shut the windows.

Her world towers and reproves the thought
of her on the charcoal street;
she is the flower that blooms by the roads,
feeds on the dust
and craves to be steel.
Form: Free Verse
Tamal Kundu Dec 2016
I walk among stars,
my vibrant soul resonates
their brilliant symphony.

It tells the story
of us, each reaching out for
the divine in the other.
Form: Sedoka
Those marble plaques in the cemetery
hold no dead beneath them
yet in the rising mists of winter evenings
when night like loose dark pebbles
fall from the sky
can be heard hooves of trotting horses
from the rows of cold white stones
and on nights favored by moon
is visible cavalry in scarlet serge
with pith helmets and carbine rifles
piercing the terror paused wind
with cries of vengeance
mirthful in washing blood with blood
on the fields of Cawnpore
dissolving into marble white stones
steeped in the peace of moonlight.
Sepoy Mutiny (1857)
On 27 June, 1857 in the town of Cawnpore (now Kanpur), India, sepoy mutineers laid siege to a British army encampment reportedly massacring British women and children.
Two days later, a company of British soldiers captured the town and extracted bloodied revenge.
This work is inspired from the time many years ago when I used to spend the evening hours alone at a cemetery in Calcutta where stand the war memorials of the British soldiers killed in the mutiny.
Tamal Kundu Dec 2016
“Sundar means beautiful,” the natives write—
The mangroves of south dance beneath daylight
With the flair of a gypsy drunk and bold
Swirling her skirt of salt. And callous gold
Prowls the swamp after trotting prey in flight.

The sentinels of south guard through the night
And push and pull against the windy might;
Behind their sieving shields, beliefs still hold—
Sundar means beautiful.

The men of south venture without invite
For honey, wood and fish into the plight;
The wives, like fortune, wait at the threshold
Praying and cursing gods foreign or old
As sleepless children scramble to recite—
Sundar means beautiful.
Form: Rondeau
Sundarbans ( Literal Translation: Beautiful Forest) is a mangrove forest on the delta formed by the super confluence of the Ganges, Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers across southern Bangladesh and Bengal. It's a swamp land that belongs to tigers, crocodiles and well, millions of people who live there and earn their livelihood from the forest. The environmental importance of Sundarbans is colossal as the mangroves protect the coastal areas from erosion, surge storms and tsunamis. In my opinion, without the forest, the human history of this region would have been a completely different one.
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