Poems by ​Rumjhum K Biswas 

UNSPOKEN
 
Imagine motherhood without the infant.
 
Imagine the moon as a fetus of earth. Imagine
unrocked sleep,
soft murmurings of unspeech.
 
Visualize
 
breath between unvoiced sound
wafting softly down to the ground
 
in a gentle arc of air. That air
sliced
in the movement of limb -
a sickle of warm flesh
 
Feel the word
 
uncorked from the O of mouth
between poised lips. Stretching into
 
the yawn of space making ideas tunnel
through the void, feeding
on morsels of time.
 
Imagine that
word
hung out to dry
in the sun
 
 
 
 
TIME’S END: PLAINTIVE ACCORD
 
It’s time to leave. It was foretold
 
In the ashes, now long grown cold.
 
The flowers have fallen. The birds are dead.
The sky is sullen, and the stars have fled.
Only hope’s quietly blowing breath
 Conjures myths. Tries to dispel death’s
Malicious whispers, and threats of decay.
As for the voice calling from faraway,
 Crying to your heart  of loss and longing,
It is a lie, a figment. Wrought from nothing.
 
 
The shibboleths will never be heard nor sung.
Nor will they fall unbidden from tongues.
How often have you heard it told
Time can neither be bought nor sold
Or tied down. Sealed in a flagon.
Time is neither genie nor demon.
Time is a creature that slips and goes
From you to them. Just like a rose
Facing the wind, and flinging its scent
Hither and thither. Where ever it bends.
 
Look at those fools running amok. Caught
In the middle. Overcome, over wrought.
Thrown into the vortex where the spin
Sucks out their souls and reels them in
Gasping, until they hear the knell
From Time’s endlessly pealing bell.
As for the moon you so greedily craved,
It yields to the sun that seems so brave
And proud, and yet yields up to the stars
Which in turn become dust, cosmic scars.
 
Wake up now. It’s all over. What’s done is done.
Life rises, subsides, waxes, wanes. Only time spins on.
 

About the poet


Rumjhum K Biswas is the author of a novel - "Culling Mynahs and Crows" published by Lifi Publications, New Delhi, and a short story collection - "Breasts and Other Afflictions of Women" published by Authorspress, India. More than 200 of her short fiction and poetry have been published all over the globe. Notably in Per Contra (USA), Markings (Scotland),Flash: The International Short-Short Story magazine (UK),  Mascara Literary Review (Australia), Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), Kritya (India), South (UK), Pratilipi (India), Eclectica (USA), Nth Position (UK), Crannog (Ireland) The Little Magazine – India, Going Down Swinging (Australia) and Etchings (Australia), among others. Her Novel Culling Mynahs and Crows was listed as one of the 20 most popular books published in 2014 by The Readers’Club, Delhi.  Her poem "Cleavage" was long listed in the Bridport Poetry Prize in 2006 and also was a finalist in the Aesthetica Contest in 2010. In 2007, her story Ahalya's Valhalla was among Story South's Notable stories of the net. Her poem "Bones" was a Pushcart Nominee from Cha: An Asian Literary Journal in 2010. In 2012 she won first prize in the Anam Cara Writer's Retreat Short Story Contest.