"diptesh" poems
We stitch our days
Into the fabric of our lives;
I have lost the old craft.
The design has gone awry;
Instead of one theme I have many;
Here is happiness and sorrow,
A patch of regrets
And this knot of indifference;
I have put them together.
It does not dazzle
Like a brilliant tapestry.
It is a patchwork quilt.
Like me, shapeless and plain;
But it tells a story,
And it keeps me warm.
Diptesh Ghosh
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:21 AM UTC
It is spring, the sun is shining.
Happiness is a dragonfly
Flitting from flower to flower
On the shallow edges
Of my heart’s placid lake;
In the shadows, in deep waters,
Something lurks motionless.
Sorrow does not move.
It waits.
Diptesh Ghosh
Jun 8, 2013
Jun 8, 2013 at 2:26 PM UTC
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
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:29 PM UTC
Perfumed happiness lingers
The fragrance you had put on;
A whiff of lavender
Long after you have gone.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:37 PM UTC
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
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:30 PM UTC
I’ve placed the sweet jasmines, dawn fresh,
By your bedside, in a bowl of water;
They will barely last out this long day.
But all day, brief day, your hours
Will be scented with the sweetness
Of something that is perfect,
Something that is fading fast,
Something only for you.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:37 PM UTC
I see you busy in your work.
Your hair, more white than black, is thin
And falls loosely over your shoulders;
There is a vein that beats prominently
Above your forehead, and your hands
Now gently shake when you are tired.
Your clothes sit light on you, the lines
On your face speak of the years in the sun;
You are not now the same person you were.
The back that bore the weight of three children
Is somewhat bent with time;
You had walked out of home to work
Overcoming the loud small-town voices
And your own shyness; they are silent now.
You were made of iron, but that too rusts.
I think of all this, and time, and sorrow.
You see me and conscious of my gaze
You smile your smile of missing teeth.
You are old, like silver, beautiful:
You seem to have walked out of a painting
By Raphael or some Renaissance master;
I cannot breathe, I am overcome:
There are days like this when we live
As if death or time did not matter,
When it is bliss just to be alive;
You tell me it may rain, to take the umbrella.
Among the most mundane things to say;
And all I think is how grateful I am
For life and you and everything,
And how old age should be exactly like this:
To have lived a life doing the things you love
Being the mistress of the small things,
Watching what you gave your heart to take shape.
Diptesh Ghosh
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:23 AM UTC
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
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:33 AM UTC
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
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:26 AM UTC
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
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:27 PM UTC
One day I’ll leave this town for good.
No one shall know I’m gone
Till some trespasser on my lawns
Makes sense of the silence,
The piles of newspapers and mail,
The cobwebbed porch and flourishing weeds.
I would be gone and won’t look back.
I shall seek the future:
The road that’s yet to be traveled,
Mistakes yet to be made,
New towns to wake up in, new friends,
All the stories yet to be told.
And nothing would hold me back.
This free spirit will be
The greatest of all my triumphs;
But since nothing would hold me back
This uncompromised freedom
Will be my only regret.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 11:57 AM UTC
When I am old (I mean older) I will
Not accept what the young will let me have:
My booming laugh will scare my pretensions
Of wisdom away. I’ll be fun, talk light
And smile at will; when working men pass by,
All brown and stretched by the long working hours
I’ll talk of lazy summer noons and soft
Evenings; I will wash away my kindness.
I’ll spend my fortunes (if someday I’m rich)
On flippant things: maybe I’ll learn to fly,
Or spend my weekends seeking sunken gold
In Bahamas all alone; I will try
New things: I’ll wear red when I please and paint
My house the deepest purple shade; I’ll eat
What I desire, drink *** on afternoons,
And pretend to chase all the prettiest girls.
When I am old (I mean older) I will
Grow eccentric. But still on winter nights
When I’m alone (which will be every night)
I’ll write (till weary eyes permit) the poems
I write to you: that will not change with age.
Like an old fruit, wrinkled and ripe, I’ll slide
Into blank nothingness carrying just your thoughts:
I’ll persist, still unfulfilled, still yearning.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:32 PM UTC
A gray winter morning,
Cold and silent;
Shrouded in the gray mist,
Even the birds are sleeping.
I think of the great silences:
Lonely winding roads after dusk,
The quiet, leather-bound libraries,
The forever unsaid words…
From the lips of the newly dead;
And then, somehow, I think of you
Drifting somewhere in this wide world;
We are separated by a million hearts,
In the cacophony of voices,
Just two voiceless strangers,
With so much left to say.
I am a star, among the countless stars,
Frozen in a dark universe,
Utterly silent, oblivious
To the babble of the planets.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:12 PM UTC
I sit under the deodar tree
Watching the valley far below:
A few fireflies flicker, briefly,
But the bright lights of the valley
Mock at their short-lived brightness.
Far above me,
The million stars,
And the bright moon
Keep their silence.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:18 PM UTC
I see you by the fence
Under the yellow Gulmohur;
The summer wind rustles the leaves
And your raven hair has come loose.
Is it night already?
In your orange dress and blue scarf
You have walked out of a painting
By Vermeer; The Street is silent.
If only I could kneel at your feet
And tear open my sorrowful heart.
But you turn to me and smile
And say something about the weather;
All I can do is mumble and nod
And say in a matter-of-fact way,
“It is going to be a fine day”.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 11:52 AM UTC
When you walk towards me from the distance
Waving those slender hands, ivory white,
Calling my name aloud so familiarly,
I’m always caught completely unprepared.
I’ve been watching you as you move across
The vast room talking to all these strangers,
Laughing at their jokes, whispering secrets,
Holding a drink in your long fingers;
Dark raven hair on white shoulders, it’s like
You’ve walked out of a book I read long ago.
You have streaked through my faltering heart
Like a meteor blazes through the dark skies.
There is so much I would like to tell you.
If you had my heart and felt the way I do,
If you could see yourself through my eyes,
All my purposeless days would be at an end.
But instead, I raise my love weary hand,
With the practiced ease of one long in use,
And put on this casual, disinterested smile
And then nonchalantly wave back at you.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:36 PM UTC
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
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:30 AM UTC
We sit in the shadows of the mountains
Under the quivering aspen tree;
The rocks older than all mankind
Watch over you and me.
The constellations unfold, one by one,
And stars twinkle, as if they knew,
Despite the briefness of existence,
The love I feel for you.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:33 PM UTC
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
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:29 AM UTC
The world has cast its spell on me.
I’m caught in her net of loveliness.
Like a fish I gape, open-eyed,
In wonder, forever and ever:
The star-laden cosmos unfolds,
Infinite, endless, with no borders;
How do the planets move in sync?
Exact, perfect, never out of step!
I can barely keep my car in line.
Nothing I see is plain, or mundane.
Dawn shines on saffron-shaded peaks,
Evening sets on the purple rocks.
The sea rushes in and retreats,
Across the white sands, the dark shores
Resounding with deep loneliness;
Seasons change -- the blue waters flow
Past green fields, yellow with mustard,
Apple trees rich with white blossoms --
Till the winter winds shake them down.
Every day, I wake up, somehow,
And find silver strands in my hair,
New wrinkles in my ageing skin…
All things change, one by one, while Time
Playfully lingers, unchanged, timeless.
Wonder comes to me, on certain feet.
How beautiful the world, how diverse.
And here I am, a lost traveler,
Stranded under the swirling stars!
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
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
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:32 AM UTC
This man is not me: someone dark
Has taken over me:
He pulls me towards pettiness
And hollow acts of shame.
I resist much, but he is strong,
And I’m just a boy in a man’s shoes.
He is deliberately mean.
I strike back with kindness.
He talks of drab despair;
But I retain vibrant dreams.
Like a chess grandmaster
I attack with my random goodness.
But only one of us
Will stand in the end.
If you see me and I don’t smile
Somehow you know the worst.
And if I embrace you
With unfeigned eagerness,
Know that I’ve seen the dark side
But returned back, only for you.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:35 PM UTC
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
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 9:28 AM UTC
Silent girl,
Who harbors cryptic thoughts,
I love your inscrutable dark eyes;
I can hear,
The perfect note of deep sadness
That resonates in your silver laugh.
Queen like
You hold back your unspoken words
While I fumble with the poor sentences;
I can read
The ancient scripts, but am illiterate
To what is clearly written in your eyes.
Leave the silent ways to the old queens
And heartless gods;
It is spring already in the mountains,
Let your heart sing.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:35 PM UTC
Evening falls gently on the resting mountainside.
The last colors linger in the multi-colored west.
Cicadas sing in the dark woods and crickets chirp,
The wood-shrikes and fly-catchers are now in their nest.
The long day is now done, and regrets are a waste,
My problems seem fleeting, insubstantial, and vain:
My shallow victories fade, my ills disappear,
When all things cease to matter, only you remain.
Diptesh Ghosh
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:19 PM UTC