April 2015
Currently pursuing an MFA at Southampton College, I’ve always lived between this world and the world of fairytales. Myths and Nature inspire me to poems and stories. At present, I am working on a fantasy novel set in a magical New York and on a memoir of my boarding school days. I also write poetry as often as I can. When I was eight, I presented the bewildered clerk at a bookstore with my diary. It was my hope that he would publish it as a book of poetry. Alas, this was not to be.
Faith
She stands still on quiet fields
and her beauty
is her sadness.
Hard won is the tenderness in her eyes.
Perhaps the fields are hers,
perhaps she only knows them
and is at pause
in her loving labor.
In her print dress, she could be ensconced
in the elegance of a sofa,
or kneeling by the hearth that warms
its surrounding damp.
In either case would children run to her,
seeking the slender lap
that is the joy of dreamless night.
In fact, so still,
it is a child she is remembering,
a child who
in the brash brightness of her youth
ran laughing through summer fields
as if they could never end.
That child's joy
is the woman's grief.
Dear Reader
You are my first and only reader.
You look at me with warm eyes.
But you do not critique me
or search my gladness in your gaze
for a subtext
to imprison me with.
In your arms, I am a story
whose ending muted soft
by the intensity of your love
is full of a wondering happiness.
Release me and I am
but the chaos of a passage.
Not knowing where I begin,
I never know how to end.
So hold me and let your kisses
render me less than a story,
more of air
than the most lyrical poem.
Let me be a phrase you hold forever,
or the full stop to your search.
Subsume me till I am no text at all,
just the rhythm to your love.
She stands still on quiet fields
and her beauty
is her sadness.
Hard won is the tenderness in her eyes.
Perhaps the fields are hers,
perhaps she only knows them
and is at pause
in her loving labor.
In her print dress, she could be ensconced
in the elegance of a sofa,
or kneeling by the hearth that warms
its surrounding damp.
In either case would children run to her,
seeking the slender lap
that is the joy of dreamless night.
In fact, so still,
it is a child she is remembering,
a child who
in the brash brightness of her youth
ran laughing through summer fields
as if they could never end.
That child's joy
is the woman's grief.
Dear Reader
You are my first and only reader.
You look at me with warm eyes.
But you do not critique me
or search my gladness in your gaze
for a subtext
to imprison me with.
In your arms, I am a story
whose ending muted soft
by the intensity of your love
is full of a wondering happiness.
Release me and I am
but the chaos of a passage.
Not knowing where I begin,
I never know how to end.
So hold me and let your kisses
render me less than a story,
more of air
than the most lyrical poem.
Let me be a phrase you hold forever,
or the full stop to your search.
Subsume me till I am no text at all,
just the rhythm to your love.
©2015 Adreyo Sen