Holding Hands with the Stars: Five Poems by Sayan Aich Bhowmik
Photo: Karan Madhok
‘I have been told the entire cosmos of our being / Hair, skin, Tissues / Renew themselves. / The old ones dissolving in air, without pain / Much like ice melting on the kitchen shelf.’
Holding Hands with the Stars
In the fifth standard,
Our science teacher
Made to us the revelation
That light from a star takes a few thousand years
To reach the earth.
I sat on that apparently useless piece of information for a week
While the world
And everyone spinning with it
Went on about the sublime and the ludicrous.
When older, I travelled to Banaras
A city older than the oldest in the sky
And on a night so quiet
That even the flowing river,
Was conscious so as
Not to make much noise.
A faint murmur of a song
Crept in through my window
Like the smell of the always
More delicious food from my neighbour’s kitchen.
Next morning, on being asked,
The receptionist sheepishly informed that the song
Was by a now missing courtesan
Who was last seen on the ghats
When the ghats were still young.
Only her music room world remains
Holding hands with the stars.
*
Soft
Raangta can now recite rhymes
In her perfectly gibberish English.
The stars twinkle brighter in her voice
When she lisps away the poems
About diamonds and wonder.
I am worried about her diction and enunciation.
The stars I feel melt into the sky and the world
The way she reads them
Within the space of those four lines.
Yet, that lilting melody stays in the room
Like clothes on a terrace
Hung out to dry.
A soft sunshine fills the apartment
When she steps in
A softer monsoon waits at the door
When she steps out.
*
Renew
The entire apartment is an auction house
Creepers on steroids from inside the table calendars
Find their way across the two bedrooms.
On moving on from people, jobs, and previous addresses
I have been told the entire cosmos of our being
Hair, skin, Tissues
Renew themselves.
The old ones dissolving in air, without pain
Much like ice melting on the kitchen shelf.
In the mirror, there is someone I once knew.
On the desk, there is a letter written in a hand
Once mine.
*
Cat Poem
There is panic amongst the cats
In my neighbourhood.
They’ve been meowing in their
Black, white, yellow, white -black dialects
Since last night.
The local councillor has already
Brought in a cat lip reader
And he is sitting with cats of all age and sizes
Listening intently.
The man who speaks six cat languages
Has given up presumably because
The issue has reached an impasse.
I was later summoned by the residents
And informed that the cats demanded
A restraining order on my daughter.
They’ve been suspicious of her affection,
Not used to a human
Loving someone without
Expecting anything in return.
*
In Many Months
In the corner of the photograph,
Her two fingers are holding open a page.
Two fingers, the length of railway tracks
Sleeping across entire Africa
On a warm summer day.
Shining, glimmering, burning
Under the sun
The faces of men braver than lions
Shimmering on the steel.
It is the first time in many months
I’ve seen something so beautiful.
It is the first time in many months
I’ll be up all night.
***
Sayan Aich Bhowmik is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Shirakole College. His debut collection of poems, I Will Come With A Lighthouse was published in 2021 by Hawakal Publishers. You can find him on Instagram: @shayan71284 and Twitter: @PoetaAuidum.
