Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Kindergarten

By Saibal Chatterjee

Story time was almost over in Hoffmann’s Kindergarten    
And the children were restless in their seats
Because Hoffmann’s stories were ever so practical
And never had any fairies or angels or God Mothers
Or even giants
But always had a moral in the end
Which the children had to learn by heart

And today’s story was almost over
Those fat pigs had to be made into fat sandwiches
Because, “Sandwiches,” cried Hoffmann,
“Are of more use to us than pigs!”

And Tommy the terrier
Who had served the shepherd for ten long years
Had to be shot
And Priscilla the cat had to be drowned
Because both were quite old now
And would have otherwise gone on living uselessly
For God knows how long

And as for the blind poet and the deaf singer
They both realised the futility of their unproductive lives
And drank poison with their tea
Much to the delight of the National Productivity Council

The story ended

“But everyone else lived happily ever after,”
Said Hoffmann

“Died happily ever after, Sir?”
Asked a child who was a little hard of hearing

“LIVED! LIVED! LIVED!” boomed Hoffmann

“LIVED…HAPPILY…EVER…AFTER” repeated the children

And these innocent babes went home and taught their mothers
How we all live happily ever after
Like black birds in their pies and pigs in their sandwiches

Saibal Chatterjee is an entrepreneur and also a visiting faculty in reputed colleges in Kolkata. He is widely travelled and is an avid photographer.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Unconcealment & Ulterior by Jared Carter

UNCONCEALMENT

Like that water touched by shining
          that yields no trace
Beyond itself, undermining
          no passing grace

Or moment, still emerging where
          no thing can last
Or venture, manifesting there
          in ways that cast

Loss into focus – what receives
          and realigns,
Where patterns on the water leave
          no mark behind.

ULTERIOR

And if such stillness overflows,
          it does not fall
Entirely away, but slows,
          as when a caul

Deflects the sight from moments lost
          to moments still
To come. Invariably the cost
          of knowing will

Be paid, yet deep within that stream,
          something remains –
A clarity that even dreams
          cannot sustain.

'Ulterior' was first published in Better than Starbucks.

Jared Carter’s most recent collection, The Land Itself, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. His Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems, with an introduction by Ted Kooser, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014. A recipient of several literary awards and fellowships, Carter is from the state of Indiana in the U.S.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

You Missed Everything!

By Sambhu Nath Banerjee

It is the time to dream big.
It is the time to work hardest to get to the top.

But--
Misfortune strikes at such an early age!

You miss the bright sunshine of today.
You miss the chilly winter and captivating spring of tomorrow.

You miss many more years of delightful living on this earth –

A sweet home, the kids playing around, 
Warm company of your sweetheart,
Weekend outing at a quaint restaurant,
Long drive to a seaside to enjoy the sunset at the horizon, 
Spending time in the peaceful abode of the hills,
The appreciation for your acting on the screen!
And, most of all, the grave fight you have fought
Against all odds in your real life.

The empathy, flooded emotion and bereavement --

Everything you missed!

The deadly disease brought the curtain down, sudden and agonising.

Wrong -- that
You have lost the battle.
But won it by a heart-warming margin
to rejoice in another world.

Dr. S N Banerjee has a great passion for travelling, photography and writing. His articles have featured in Cafe Dissensus, Muse India and Briefly Zine and 3 Elements.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Epistle to Ms Austen by Phil Wood

Phil Wood
EPISTLE TO MS AUSTEN 

Dear Jane, although I do not have your mind,
A mind that makes a moral choice so clear,
Now clear enough for me to right my wrongs,
The wrongs that take refuge in daily muddles,
For muddles marinade in solitude;
Yet solitude gives thought for humankind,
A humankind in which we both belong,
Belong because we live not for our puzzles,
Those puzzles are a solace only for fears,
For fears will offer no solicitude.
I learn solicitude from you dear Jane.

Phil Wood was born in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. His writing can be found in various places, including recently : Ink Sweat and Tears, Noon Journal of the Short Poem, and a collaboration with John Winder at Abergavenny Small Press.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Poems by Sukrita Paul Kumar

Sukrita Paul Kumar
TEDDY BEAR ON THE WAR FRONT
(News Report from Irpin, Ukraine, 2022) 
					
The teddy bear sits benumbed
presiding over the rubble
Of civilisation
Of compassion
Of humanity
A debris of fun and play

Teddy sits smirking over the  
Skeleton of the cat, her
Bones, a curled cadaver 
Her couch and cushions 
in smithereens

The house shredded by the missile 
Walls cracking and crumbling with the  
Child’s screams as shards
From the tiny throat

Teddy bear, the dumb survivor,
No arms to melt his frozen heart
Watching the carnage with
Big round buttons 
gyrated into unseeing eyes

Wrapped in grief
The gentle wool on Teddy spikes
The bristles stand stiff and sharp
Rivers of tears flow 
Into the turbulent ocean 

And a tsunami of teddy bears 
Marches into the war zone
Looking for children to comfort



TELLING VIGNETTES 
			
It’s dementia…

For grandmother
It’s a staccato war

Ends each day and
Starts the next morning again

            it is a re-wind
                     to World War II 

        the wake of bombing
        kills people seventy years later

*

Pregnant with deadly nightmares 
Moskva the missile cruiser sank

The Black Sea swallowed all her bombs 
Stuffed with a thousand deaths


*

Bullet marks on the walls
        remnants of war
people in homes behind
	unhealed  

*

Ghosts born of bombs
are stripped of death
        Sans the mortal attire 

        They live on to haunt

*




The web of nerves on
      the inert dog’s neck
             pulsates
                     with lifelessness
It’s wartime


*

More live than the forlorn dog
are the shadows of bullets on 
the walls of Irpin

Deep craters on the earth
hold silence
born of the boom

*

They are not moon craters 

       These on the earth mark 
       technology of warfare

       Massive progress
       in hunting and
       getting the big kill

Sukrita Paul Kumar, former Fellow of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, held the prestigious Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at Delhi University. An honorary faculty at Corfu, Greece, she was an invited resident poet at the prestigious International Writing Programme at Iowa, USA. Her most recent collections of poems, are Vanishing Words, Country Drive and Dream Catcher. Her critical books include Narrating Partition, The New Story and Conversations on Modernism. She has co-edited many books, including Speaking for Herself: Asian Women’s Writings (Penguin). An Honorary Fellow at HK Baptist University, Hong Kong, she has published many translations and has held exhibitions of her paintings. Currently she is series co-editor of “Writer in Context” volumes being published by Routledge UK and South Asia.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

More Poems by Jonathan Chan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
SNOWDRIFT

“The trees stood with their backs to us.
Snow-depth was measured with dead straw.
Footprints grew old out on the crust.
Under a tarp, language withered.”
- T. Tranströmer, ‘Face to Face’,
trans. Patty Crane

fissured by the cut of language,
these prayers began to go cold.
a personal fear.
as the choir sings, wooden pews shudder.
faces glow auburn by candlelight.
eyes close, desperate to focus the mind
in its churning. a wisp blows.
the snow swallows each blade of grass.
the ground is rich with meltwater.
beyond lies a gleaming path.
boundless.
the cold of every crunch of snow.
the pines whisper, shrouded in frost,
another, then another.
voices vanish in the horizon.
breath turns to mist.
footsteps blend in the pathway ahead.
they are inscriptions on icy parchment.
the glare is bright, the lands thin.
the winds cut like a scythe.
every second is a tremulous panting.
then, restless flesh becomes still.
above a shuddering jaw,
language strengthens.
boots begin to lift into clear brightness,
slipping into every cavernous print.
the flanks of pine and bark,
the trail carved of extravagant tears,
one movement after the other,
footprints made into a newness again.


BRIGHTON PIER

we imagined a ritual: the glimpse of
ash catching colder gales, tumbling
into foaming waters, the merciless
gray crash against sand, less itinerant
than the tumbling of lily petals. a
ceremony squeezed in the shade of
a foreseen grief, a lacuna felt only in
the passage of clouds, the strained
contours of a monochrome sundown.
it was not for the fungibility of dust, the
analogue image of the whispering dead,
nor the brittleness of a swirling, faithless
rut. we folded our qualms toward death
into each other’s palms, standing at a
rickety pier, shaking, like reeds,
by the wind.
Courtesy: Creative Commons

Jonathan Chan is a writer and editor of poems and essays. He is the author of the poetry collection, going home (Landmark, 2022). His writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Confessions

Written by and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi

Courtesy: Creative Commons
I decided to bring a baby bird from the nest,
Only to live with a beautiful spring song.
When I brought it from the nest
I'd no time to be aware of the tears of the mother bird.
I gave the baby bird water to quench its thirst.
I gave it food to satiate its hunger.
It died.
I recalled my own childhood…
Realised what I'd done while reading the wisdom of the Saint.
It's not right to give water to the baby bird,
Nor proper to give it something to eat,
But leave it to cherish the warmth of the bosom of mother bird
And the blue sky where it flies as much as it likes.
Only when it grows up hearing the song of mother bird
It will become an ethereal minstrel* singing high in the sky.

*William Wordsworth's poem: To the skylark

Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Colour of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Another Year

By George Freek

ANOTHER YEAR (After Mei Yao Chen*)

Icy fog hangs from the trees,
the trees which await 
a warming breeze
to survive another winter.
In the morning there will be
frost on the windows.
Even my thoughts freeze. 
And yet, another summer
will arrive. Flowers
will come alive,
as if a magician waved a wand.
Robins will appear
as the warming sun appears.
I’ve lived sixty years,
and I still hope for more,
as the moon,
so distant, appears
to grin ambiguously,
like an inviting whore.
*Song Dynasty poet Mei Chao Yen (1002-1060)

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Rows of Betelnut Trees by My Window

Written by Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1929 in Chittagong, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam

Areca nut or betel nut trees. Courtesy: Creative Commons
Farewell, neighbours of my nightly vigil, 
Standing aloft next to my window,
Companions, the night of parting elapses.
From this day ceases our secret exchanges,
From this day ends our quiet conversations....

Putting its worn forehead on the porch of the setting sky
The moon cries, “Traveler awake, night is all but over”
Night spreads across the forest deep; overcome with sleep,
It glances back, clasping in its hand its dark disheveled hair!

Startled, I wake up, wondering: whose breath brushes my forehead?
Who fans my warm forehead, who wakes up by my bedside?
I rise seeing by my window the sentinel of my dreams,
Companions of my dark nights, the row of betel nut trees!

Hadn’t we once viewed each other through fluttering eyelids?
Friends, I recall what we said to each other all night long!
When tears flowed from weary eyes beginning to burn,
Your leaves appear to me to be like the cooling palms
Of my beloved. The rustling of your leaves reminded me
Of her plaintive voice, calling out mournfully.
I saw in your leaves the kohl-dark shape of her eyes.
Your bodies in silhouette suggested her slim shape.
The gentle breeze wafting by evoked her delicate air.
Your branches seem to be draped with her sari’s borders.
And you fanned me as tenderly as she did with her hands!

These thoughts troubled me as I entered sleep’s domain.
As I slept, I felt the frill of your dark blue dresses lying
Unfurled besides my pillow. I saw in my dream you entering,
Furtively and fervently kissing my warm forehead.

Perhaps in the dream I extended my hands to touch you
Only to touch the window. Then I clasped your hands shyly.
Companions, now that window will have to be shut.
The path beckons, fellow travelers shout, “time to depart!”

This day before I take my leave
I feel like revealing myself to you as well as knowing you.
I feel close to your feelings; yet why does my insatiable mind
Yearn to hear from you the thoughts lodged in your bosom?
I know—we will never get to know each other physically,
Our hearts will only keep playing a tune of pain mournfully! 
 Perhaps I’ve seen a vision of you that is not like you at all.
But how can that harm you, if it does enough to swell my heart?
If my tears transform you into a thing of beauty,
If I can build a monument stirred by love of someone
As the Taj Mahal was built from the pain of losing Mumtaz,
Tell me, what harm will that do to anyone?
I won’t adorn my room with you, won’t create a paradise.... 

Perhaps birds never lighted on your branches,
In your bower, amidst your foliage, cuckoos never sang. 
Looking up to the heavens in exaggerated appeal
You kept vigil in the dark, though none stayed up
To open the window. But I was always the first to arrive,
And look at you in rapt attention in the dark. Departing lovingly,
On your leaves I wrote my first letters of love.
Let that be my consolation, whether I meet her or not....

Companions, I’ll never wake up again to look at you
I won’t interrupt anyone’s trance after a tumultuous day.
Silently, all alone, I’ll burn the incense of my suffering.

I shouldn’t ask, but can’t help doing so before leaving today—
From behind your wooden screen, did you view me lovingly too?
Did you also take a look at me when I opened the window?
Was it the wind or my love that made your leaves sway?
When behind your green borders, the moon will go to sleep,
And I will have to repress all happy feelings—
In your joyous moments, will you recall this passerby’s brief visit?
Will your voice resound in this empty room in loud lamentations?
Will the moonlight become insipid in your vision then?
Will you open shutters and look at the formless world outside?
Or will you keep standing rapt in your thoughts all day long?

Tied to exhausted earth, you’ve become a row of helpless trees,
Your feet are soiled with dust, your heads enveloped in emptiness.
Your days scald in the sun’s heat, your night’s chill in the dew,
You lack the strength to cry, you seem to be in a deathlike stupor.
If your problems fail to arouse you, companions, and stir you,
What can I hope to gain by burdening you with my gift of pain?...

*                  *                  *                 *                 

If I come to your mind by mistake, try to forget me,
If by mistake my windows open again,
Please shut them again.... Don’t look out in the dark at all
Through your wooden screen—for the one no longer on earth

The poem recited by Nazrul’s son, Kazi Sabyasaachi, in Bengali

Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) was known as the  Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.

.

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

.Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Poetry

Murmuration by Jared Carter

Starlings’ Murmuration. Courtesy: Creative Commons
MURMURATION

Nothing that can last, only this
          vast enchantment,
This breaking through – the sudden shifts
          and turns, torrents

Of light and dark unerringly
          expanding, now
Dissolving – stark asymmetry
          revealing how

What vanishes returns. These are
          the magi, drawn
To ancient practice, journeyed far,
          still moving on.

Jared Carter’s most recent collection, The Land Itself, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. His Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems, with an introduction by Ted Kooser, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014. A recipient of several literary awards and fellowships, Carter is from the state of Indiana in the U.S.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL