Office on the Other Side of the Mango Leaf
After seven years I forgot
The birthday of my dead son.
There is a gossip running among my neighbours
That a curse is pierced in my eyes
which always makes me walk looking upwards, lost.
Actually, I look up to the geometry of clouds
And seek for that particular shaped one
Whose rain will rinse my curse away.
But the winds has conspired
with the breath of migrating egrets.
Every time I am almost there a faint breeze
Hides it behind the buildings of my town.
I go to my office on the other side of the mango leaf
Following the trails of the urban ants breaking lanes
As if their antennas lost the transmission of common sense.
I carry the folded memo of guilt in my famished wallet.
I stopped looking up to the sky.
I somehow grew shrewd.
I look for that clouds reflection
On the potholes of my town.
One day when I save enough salary
I will own all the potholes of my town.
I will throw a coin each in it and make a wish
To save our precious spine from the tectonic jerks
So that it remains intact
and all of us could carry
the burden of our guilt throughout our life
until one day we all find our own cloud
that will rinse our curses away.
Three Palmyra Trees Near the Pond
Once three demi-gods, tired of their godliness,
turned themselves into three brothers and sat near this pond
with their fishing rods, waiting for the bait to be taken.
The villagers did not know their names, and the brothers did not know
how long humans should wait with their baits dipped.
That night the tentacles of kolmi [water spinach] grasped them slowly, and
eons later they turned into three palmyra trees.
Now, after every first summer rain, their warts grow into palms.
Their curse will end only when,
riding the syllables of the wind, a black-hooded oriole
arrives and preens their leaves in the mirror of the pond,
and a dark green climbing perch splashes the water
with its caudal fin upon them thrice.
Till then these palmyra trees will remain there,
waiting with their baits, trying to grow taller to reach home.
Sawmitra Roy is a lower primary school teacher. He lives in Silchar, Assam. His poems have been published in Bengaluru Review, Indian Literature, The Little Journal of Northeast India, Madras Courier, Setu: A Bilingual Journal of Literature, Arts and Culture, Shadowkraft, CultureCult Masques, The Assam Tribune. He is the editor of an English little magazine called Yawp! published from Silchar. He also illustrates graphic strips for poems. His debut book of poetry “In the Streets of Your City” was published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2020.