Poems by Amrita Bhattacharyya

Inamorato 
 
At the start of every crash
May feel the buzz of a prophet.
 
With the shoulder that droops,
Brickyard in the side,
Smell of hearth, head and ears
And the letting go of night...
 
At the sloping road of the camp,
With the drill and call being over,
The migrant, getting wet in the rain,
The soft clay still gets the stir of war!
 
The end of the ruin! — 
No prophet — never be.
With deep fever,
And from the acute pangs of a groaning frame,
The shawl being cleared away crops up the lover. 
 
Then he opens the window with gentle touch!
 
 
 
The temporal 
 
Oh! flow temporal! Momentary flux!
Tied to the creed and cramp of the cult,
Being the mass of water — great, intense
With life at death's door
Or, to say
Where agony took the leave,
Watching the bleak, crude stupor.
 
The quick flow takes off the stake, kills the bar,
Being the only haunt with blitheness! Dear you!
Some drift the gross subjection,
Coated in the tinged plastic,
Some do dart at the galaxy, or where the flow starts the course.
 
The feathers and the flock have hinted at over and again
With the unknown heartbeat,
The old, too old face-quicksand!
 
Oh, Flux of the time being! Appeal to you!
When it comes in the vein of the food - devourer, --
Then, only then, gleams the text of body and the parts.
And out of fright, gasping terror, not sparing an inch,
Lulling the thought of the great mistake,
That may bring forth the fetter once.


Translated by Nilanjan Majumder

 
 

Amrita Bhattacharyya is a bi-lingual poet and a writer. She is presently working as an Assistant Professor at Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University Kolkata. She is the author of seven collections of poems, a collection of short stories and two novels written in Bengali. Her writings have been published from Poetry Out Loud (London), Pynecone Review (Austria), Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Indian Writers’ Forum, Anandabazar Patrika, Ajkal patrika, Desh (Ananda Publishers), Nabokollol Magazine and in various renowned magazines and journals in India and abroad

---

---