By Kiriti Sengupta
A Place Like Home
Lights turned off,
three glasses retire
as the bar closes.
The first stands upright,
the other upside down,
another lies horizontal.
.
For last few hours
the crystals held liquor,
ice, scent and comfort.
They also witnessed
eyes that spoke volumes
while lashes refused
to flutter.
.
The pub reopens
the next day
to the riff of unrest.
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Observance
1
Visitors, who checked in
to see my father post-surgery,
appeared stressed.
After his discharge several came home.
Eyes moistened, they wished him Godspeed.
All of us except Baba knew…
Ma informed him months later.
.
No one pays a call anymore.
Three decades…
2
Tittle-tattle halts.
The mother waves a goodbye
as the school bus sets off.
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Both these poems are excerpted from Kiriti Sengupta’s collection, Rituals (March 2019, Hawkal Publishers), with permission from the author
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Kiriti Sengupta is a poet, editor, translator, and publisher from Calcutta. He is the recipient of the 2018 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for his contribution to literature. He has published eleven books of poetry and prose and two books of translation and co-edited five anthologies. Sengupta is the chief editor of the Ethos Literary Journal.
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