Two Poems by Jharna Sanyal

By Jharna Sanyal

Words

My words do not add up to my world,
there is always something in excess.

Sparrows had escaped the word-wired trap;
they now tweet from the sun spangled awning.
Words are porous; they had to let tears go,
rivers pass by, and sea is too vast for the
syntaxes to hold; rain, too fluid for the consonants.

At the end of the day, I find my words
mending gaps and pores with the vowels.

There are only five.

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Your Love Poem

I walked through your love poem.
You wrote stars with folded petals glowing on apricot trees;
there were rain clouds to shower on me as I would float by
the moon-dazzled coral reef. Absence of flowers, fragrance
made your love poem seem so distant a song that I could
hardly hear it.
My favourite flower has no place in your love poem,
…you cannot spell geranium. Your world is the sky,
clouds, stars and moon. My funny little inchworm is
not in your love poem; nor my parrot that sits on the
guava tree at dusk. My scampering squirrel that keeps on
flipping travel brochures with its bushy tail – you never
asked him to visit your poem…
Your love poem has oceans and mountains,
but…not…but…not… the river without a bridge
that I long for even in my dreams.
I walk out of your love poem – dazed.

Bio:
Dr. Jharna Sanyal was formerly a Professor at the Department of English, University of Calcutta.

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