Calcutta University – Borderless

By Amit Shankar Saha

Fear in Times of Corona

Wish Fulfilment

Today when you read your poems and I am far away

the rains will bend their direction to mourn the distance,

the lights will sit heavy on the evening of remembrance,

a lake in Kashmir will abruptly freeze in sorrow,

a mirage in Kutch will waylay a traveler for water,

memory will weave a flower patterned chintz curtain,

the dreams of the curtain will cover the world like a storm,

a poet will squeeze the universe in his palms and say,

“Today when you read your poems and I am far away

I wish the words that escape your lips come all my way.”

Quarantined Night

Fear of your inexistence
surrounds me at night
like muggers in a dark lane.

Fear that hoods my head,
covers my eyes, pummels
my chest, kicks my gut.

Fear that leaves me bruised
with no one to accuse
in a dark lane of the night.

This night I quarantine the night
in the madhouse of viral nightmares
between pillows of sleep and death.

This night isolated from all
other nights of quarantined darkness
reminds of one who died distanced.

This night the dead poet awakes
from Rome's Protestant Cemetery,
breaks the distended curfew of death.

This night I too break the curfew
and in my viral thoughts visit you
to write my name in water.

This night that brings a latent promise
and footsteps of familiar delight
is the madhouse of saddest sighs.

Amit Shankar Saha is an award-winning poet and short story writer. He has won the Poiesis Award,, Wordweavers Prize, Nissim International Runner-up Prize. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is the co-founder of Rhythm Divine Poets and Assistant Secretary of Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library. His poems are in Best Indian Poetry Anthology 2018 and he has read at Sahitya Akademi. His collections of poems are titled “Balconies of Time” and “Fugitive Words”. He has a PhD in English from Calcutta University and teaches in the English Department of Seacom Skills University.