By Sekhar Banerjee
The Kingdom of Salt
My aunt, not a poet and now dead, used to say
an ocean is a dark kingdom of tear,
fish eggs and the lost ships
Geography teachers always place a town
near a bay and fasten the bay with a quay
Like a tissue
and a tear drop hanging from the eye
A river can never really hook a bay and pull it inlands
as suggested by some Indian map-makers,
traditional, when in love;
a bay is too moody and expansive
Like a huge enemy ship lost from a dark fleet
It is a descendant of the ocean and some clownfish
If you want to prevent the ocean at the bay, you build
an abrupt settlement of raw fish,
sweat water, mechanics and the fishermen
at the river’s hem;
install iron links, a hollow sky, piers and the jetties;
start a family, rear kids, beat the wife
and drink local liquor, always sweet and sour, like a village pastor
and sleep at the start of a dark night
It sometimes happens with all anglers, some lovers,
a few retired geography teachers and the dealers
of tear, hook and fish
My mother, a poet and now dead, used to say
a river and a bay can never be separated
like love and a fall from grace
Like the clown fish and the shipwreck. Like tap water
and a blue bucket beneath. Like a flow
and the loss of it
Sekhar Banerjee is an author. He has four poetry collections and a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. His works have been published in Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, Verse-Virtual, Setu, Kitaab, Borderless Journal, Better Than Starbucks, The Tiger Moth Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Kolkata, India.
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