Three Poems by Mitali Chakravarty

Painting: Lou Majors
By Mitali Chakravarty
Crimson
The sky never dies
never falls sick
never splits
It stretches from end to end
uniting man, space,
birds and beasts
with its silent song
interrupted by thunder
calling out to the lightning
to strike, strike out
the Darkness of the rainclouds
that drain pattering
the Earth till drenched
with the wetness of the sky,
it springs back to life.
The grass grows green on both sides of
the national divide separating mankind,
Serrated, till gun violence creates a Splash of Red.
The sun sets in the West.
***
Borders
Lies built by Manchester Mills
that spell virulence
colours of hate
corona roasted deaths
camps in distress
Life ebbs at the edge
There is no life
no death
but ash grey
silence that pieces the land
to yours and mine
Pestilence
The birds fly across the great divide
Grass grows over the boundary line
Man dies with gunshots bleeding out his life
Rat- a – tat- a – tat. Rat- a – tat- a – tat.
***
Introspection
Woven dreams of Calm
of Peace, of Life with Love
Shatter amidst Silences
of corona filled shards
To pounce that thin
Beam of Hope
Do we deserve to live?
With broken dreams of
Harmony. Home with only
Walls that fragment
Each Hope, Each Twist
When will we learn to give,
With Love and Trust live?
Bio:
Mitali Chakravarty is a writer and an editor. Her by-lines appeared in The Statesman, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times and The Pioneer between the 1980s and 1992; more recently among others on SETU (Pittsburgh), Kitaab, Countercurrents, Words and Worlds (Vienna), Modern Literature, The Daily Star (Bangladesh) and Harbinger Asylum Quarterly (USA). She has been part of numerous anthologies. She has been translated to German. Mitali translates Bengali writer Nabendu Ghosh to English and also translates from Hindi. She has authored In the Land of Dragons, a humorous book of essays on living in China, where she resided for eight years. She is the founding editor of borderlessjournal.com and serves on the editorial board of Words & Worlds, a PEN affiliated journal from Vienna.
***
Like Cafe Dissensus on Facebook. Follow Cafe Dissensus on Twitter.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday is the blog of Cafe Dissensus magazine, based in New York City and India. All materials on the site are protected under Creative Commons License.
***
Read the latest issue of Cafe Dissensus Magazine, “Poetics and politics of the ‘everyday’: Engaging with India’s northeast”, edited by Bhumika R, IIT Jammu and Suranjana Choudhury, NEHU, India.
2 Responses to “Three Poems by Mitali Chakravarty”
Grateful for the Very absorbing and meaningful sequence of thought provoking concerns of life and the underlying message of hope and trust all alive in so very assuring way of yours ! Thanks Mitaliji !
Congratulations Mitali I wish you more succes!