Prasenjit Maiti (b 1971) is Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Burdwan University, West Bengal, India. Dr Maiti stays at Calcutta and may be contacted at pmaiti@vsnl.com
.What
about a woman
without trappings, what about
walking along walks that
are no more, what about my
writing that is not published
anymore? What about a woman
without
trappings whom I can take
along walks that are no more
like
distant heartbreaks? What about
my
writings that cannot express
themselves?
What about
my
women whom I do not meet
anymore? What about my woman
whose
name I do not know
and
whose distant lips haunt me
in my nearby heartbreaks?
We
were the excesses into the gory
shameless nightfalls as teacups and
china and stutters share a similar face
across
the years and the births of our
endless spasms, we were searching
crannies
and darkness to hold each other
fast unto eternity to swell in your sweat
your
women aroma, your heaving cups
overwhelmed
at the sight of the darkening
areola
flooding our vestiges, overflowing
the shores of your first virginity, yet you
have
gone away and are no more to be
found among the cloisters of antipoetry
nothing
more is to be lost, apparently
with
your birding away from all those terraces
poolsides and stairs, passages and landings
that
once ached like our bodies
our laughter and lost distances
I
like my women long: eyes and bodies
and I like my days short like dolls
that
pillow against your bust
and
I like my days cut short
by
a sudden, bloody euphoria
I
like my days dead, haughty and hungry
like
so many hollow women, cut and dried
like virgin forests, like the disturbing rustle
of fall, like wasted memories
You
never happen to miss me
anywhere, around your lips
while
licking the froth
of
quite empty eventides
alone
in some winter woods
or
crying and rising and falling
like
we were the waves
once
breaking against the endlessness
of
passions, in the swell and flood
of
our desires perched like birds
you never miss me when in love
or wistfully alone
If you think you can speak to me
I can speak to you speechless and dumb:
speak to me, my love, my silly fancy
do speak to me like soundless waters
breaking on the rocks of yesteryears
like whispers, like fragrances: don’t you know
and can’t you see and won’t you care
whatever happens to my folly
and my images? Still you paint you honey faces
across acrid tea cups as I start collecting
my soul around, the bits and pieces
of shrieks and laughter
from the fancy bedrooms of my desires
and whiplash: locking horns in horny memories
I kneel to you as I must, the sky lowering itself along the river mouth of Calcutta, the sun lackadaisical and alone, I kneel to you as I must in the only manner I happen to know, your eyes like Calcutta my favorite defeat, our loitering along school in winter and the ice candies of summer like the distant city lights of Calcutta my ignominy and our evenings, our strolls and pavement trees, I kneel to you as I must in the only manner I happen to know
the door opens and I’m about to enter when you ask me to caress your mound and I’m so crestfallen that I tuck up like nobody’s business and look at you with wild-eyed wonder when you explain you’ve got to catch a flight to nowhere and do I mind withdrawing my nothingness stuck on you, it hurts so much and besides it is not sure enough where to enter? where am I going my youth like Oedipus, where I’m going like billy-o?
do I love you so and regret my winter evenings spent alone in Calcutta as the smog rolls across the river and churns up old sorrows best forgotten and drowned in the cream being whiplashed and the coffee being stirred among the familiarity of snug old ghosts and darkness? Why do I love you so and miss my beats as I strip you naked in my dreams and ravish the wonderment of your soul like grapefruit punch? Why do I always blow my lines when I write to you, my youth galore, my sadness wine, my fairness cream, my winter anew?
They say I sodomize my days and works of hands but they cannot even wait and watch my sunsets across your ample breasts dark purple and acrid as the years have gone by . . . They don’t even have a word to say about my return from abroad sweating stammering and afraid and the stormy afternoon when we made one another and you were so violently sick and bloody that I’d to even hand out your white napkin that turned red as the sun turned red in Calcutta my beloved and my desolation . . . they don’t know anything and yet they dare say I sodomize my days and works of hands applying cream across your arm pits applying litany to my sorrows applying vodka to one of my final visits to Bengal’s poetry churches . . . tell me my sonny shall I dare sing hey nonny nonny hey and returneth as I must from dust to smirking dust?
It was late in the morning when the sun was finally persuaded to rise, rinsing his gleaming teeth of fire with yours at the nasty slipstream of memories, crushing angry passion flowers and wild berries among your virgin forests to face the day like a man as he must without you … and why must you be always so cold and serene like the distant stars? this sunny day is like any other among the serenade of sorrows that remind you of cold battles foregone and old soldiers deserted like nobody’s mundane business … it was late in the evening when all the bottles of perfume finally rushed to woo you and your aroma and musk of richness that made the sun go quietly down across the yonder rivers like a dandy whimper … and so the sun must rise and the sun must set and the sun must cry and wry its useless hands till you’re aflame and nearly all your rivers go all so blatantly dry