September 2021
Bio Note: I am a retired geo-scientist and now engage in full-time writing bilingual (English and Bengali) poetry and do book reviews and translation. Yet my first love is traveling and photography. Being a Tiger fan, I love Jungle Safari too much. I have jointly edited the Indo-American Anthology Bridging Continents. I have a number collections of poems to my credit. My recent collection of poems is Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets.
Away with Red Hibiscus
Everything outside this room is a
distant country,
all of us know what is incontinence,
the sounds of muezzin that float across the city
is filled with sacred souls,
a sprinkle of references provides
a frission of nowness,
air is soft with the scent of jasmine and rose,
conversations are strewn with quotes from Tagore
breezes in from the Maidan,
shrouded by clouds with rain falling.
red hibiscus in bloom on the triangular park,
the book of lies hidden in plain sight
garden alive with bees
a jar filled with unacquitted love,
kulfi, jelabis, and there is the paratha dough,
when you can’t breathe, then you know it’s ready.
flutters from closing pages of the night
let me be this indiscreet always,
speaking without the need of the voice
because breath is the first-born language
*kulfi, jelabis are Indian Sweets, paratha dough is Fried Dough Indian Food
©2021 Gopal Lahiri
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL