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Sonnet Mondal,
Poet -- West Bengal,India |
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Sonnet Mondal is the author of
six books of poetry and is the managing editor of the Enchanting
Verses Literary Review, Editor of Best Poems Encyclopedia, Editor of
Sonnets in the New Millennium (Diamond Point Press) and the Sub
Secretary Geneal of Poetas Del Mundo
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The Yard and the Aeroplane
From the roof of our old house
the scene of children playing cricket
in the open yard that once used to be
the house of the landlord makes
me feel as if it’s me with my siblings
quarrelling over who’s the next to bat.
A scar of a friendly fight as it now seems
gripped me with fear of scolding from elders.
Whatever little way I used to try to hide it
it marked an evening when both love and rebuke
filtered out from the mouth of my mother.
An aeroplane flying above made me look at my watch.
This is my present and of all those who were once
with me in that yard; the past was definitely nicer
for they were days much away from retirement.
~~~~~~~~~~
My crippled skin
I dream if the sunshine could be mine,
Apart from the salary, food and friends.
If, I could pet it within my torch,
Bind it with the switch of my heart,
Tie it with the batteries of sensation.
Swinging in the wooden chair
Of the room, that sprinkles dust upon me
To merge me into it;
And waiting for the daily tea
That seems more seductive than females,
I am in decorum of madness,
My charismatic panache becomes one
Among the boiled tea leaves, thrown to
Be one with the soil.
Spiders and lizards suck the juice;
The sugar and tannin pass down
The sunken throat;
Just keep me alive.
The bed beside, ugly with rotten rags
Once veiled the might
To unpeel skins of banana
Tasting the pulp; it still looks hungry
With pores in its veil.
The bananas still sell but for me
My crippled skin prefers tea to money.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Memory Tree
Some memories remain as a ladder connecting
roof and floor of life.
Same steps remind me that the chain of life
still remains tied with the trunk of the memory tree.
White beards and moustaches just stand for wisdom
swaying like bamboo grasses in the breeze of happiness,
storm of grief and gale of wild thoughts; all tied in one
knot.
Going up the ladder I have seen schools, colleges,
marriage
and now going down for my children I see the same.
Returning back to country I see the same buildings
younger than me in paints and roughly the same people
I forgot to note their faces for which they look alike
in t-shirts and trousers and in cars and busses.
The strongest one I face
as I head towards my village
in the train which still has the same name,
the same colour and same music with it is-
vendors shouting in similar tone and outside the ravaging
rail’s rhythm
forces me to ask for a food item and he says looking at an
old man,
“Father, give the one he needs.”
Father? He looks so household;
So old and still so fast in making the fast food for me,
the Clock tower of college days rings in my heart.
The ladder jerks me into a fear of fall, into the net of
memories.
I am still tied with the trunk of the memory tree.
I know, it won’t rot for generations to come.
~~~~~~~~~
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