CELEBRATION This morning there is a celebration in the prettiest world. A tiny bird starts singing and then swings over the lake. Imagine lifting the water jug and finding it empty in the monsoon; it’s only dry winds blowing all seasons. Fairy lights dance on the yellow grass, the avian world knows there is less rain, roots die deep within. Somewhere at the corner of the sky, grey clouds build up and now other birds join singing in the curtains of leaves. How important it is to stay together, looking at everything, then fly away drawing a great circle over and above! They whistle and show how happy they are in unison, their small ecstatic faces shine under the moist sky. The trees, the oak leaves on the water’s edge and those yellow reeds clap as the birds’ rest on the pine top. RESISTANCE You can’t tell a nest from a tangle of jasmines, can’t tell a snake shedding its skin. At times rocks meet, strike, roll together to the first obstacle or the end of the slope. You can’t tell hands from ivy choking in a fence. beyond the split windows of the room, can’t recognise a man who lives in my very own clothes, my mirror notes only the geranium and growing pains. You take steps to the place where you begin to vanish until you go back and wait under the shadow, like an inheritance, like land surfacing a morning halved by grey and white clouds. Some space to breathe, but just enough -- I must find myself in the wind’s swelling lung. WONDROUS THING Perhaps they are mother and daughter still together from last year’s final clutch. I keep waiting for one of them to start a nest out in the marshy woods, the great blue robin rookery is in full swing -- building four nests in the still leafless sycamore each in full view of the bold eagles. The forest is cooler and shadier than my yard. Spring ephemerals are just emerging -- little strands of stalkless flowers and pepper root toothwort that I look for. Happy still to see that spring seems a bit slower to arrive at the woods. In their eyes, it remains a wondrous thing.
Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 29 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose in Bengali and English are published across various anthologies globally. His poems has been translated into 16 languages.
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