By Amritendu Ghosal
THE VILLAGE REMEMBERS DEVOTION
An unhooked summer evening
A few shops bob atop the bubbles of drowsiness
The lanes are dim
The seventy-year-old grocery man
Opens a steel can of ghee
For his friend --The cream is good
Homemade-- he says.
His friend in grey trousers and a white shirt
Buys two cigarettes,
a box of matches
and a five-rupee pack of butter biscuits.
My heart pings to the sky and pongs back
Who would suspect that the world was on fire?
The stars while away a few more minutes
Smoking in the back alley
Before broadcasting intergalactic lessons
On space, time and proportion.
Night descends
The cows are back in the shed
I hear, floating in with the western breeze
Kirtan songs from the temple at the top of the hill
Where they say Vishnu had set his foot
So long ago nobody could tell exactly how long.
The sweet cymbals mingle with the resonant dhol
The eternal rhythm keeps playing
The children fall asleep in the village.
Amritendu Ghosal works as an Assistant Professor in Department of English at Anugrah Memorial College, Gaya. He has completed his doctoral research from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and has worked as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. His poems have appeared in Ucity Review, Mad Swirl, Visions, Shot Glass Journal, The Tipton Poetry Review, The Sunflower Collective etc.
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