A Better Place to Rest: Three Poems by Kiriti Sengupta
Photo: Bulbul Islam
Poetry: ‘Death pauses verdict; the authority mars evidence. / The doomed is put on the pyre; rallies slit through / the silence.’
Demonstration
for the doctor, raped and killed on August 9 at RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata
Calling out misery cannot assure justice. Does rectitude
wake overnight? Peccadillos create routes to felonies.
Ages pass to bring the upright.
Death pauses verdict; the authority mars evidence.
The doomed is put on pyre; rallies slit through
the silence.
Monarch keeps a vigil, foreseeing a mass mutiny.
Iniquity is ignored as
the records stand revised for scrutiny.
*
Soul-Searching
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Matthew 22:37–39)
If your mates love
supernatural flicks,
could you take a quick survey?
Why does the possessed
(or the devil,
for that matter) scream?
They are seldom offered a welcome drink.
They find the earth asphyxiating.
They fear the human race.
Ghosts are indebted to death.
The study will help them
navigate their past to create
room for wholesome sustenance.
*
Eulogy
Wish I could secure
a better place
for you to rest.
I found you
at peace
on this earth.
***
Kiriti Sengupta, the 2018 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize recipient, has poems published in The Common, The Florida Review Online, Headway Quarterly, The Lake, Amethyst Review, Dreich, Otoliths, Outlook, Madras Courier, and elsewhere. He has authored fourteen books of poetry and prose, two books of translation, and edited nine anthologies. Sengupta is the chief editor of Ethos Literary Journal, and he looks after the English language division of Hawakal Publishers Private Limited, one of the leading independent presses founded by Bitan Chakraborty. Sengupta lives in New Delhi. You can find him on Twitter: @KiritiSKiriti and Instagram: @kiritisengupta. More at www.kiritisengupta.com.
