Sharmila Ray

Home 1

Home is a manuscript you write and rewrite
every day, every week, every month, every year…
The manuscript moves from calm outlines
to rugged terrain washed by late summer’s light.
Seen from a distance the manuscript moves, grows through
happiness and suffering, smoke-trail and vapour,
often glistening in oneness,
Artefacts, niches rooms all laid out according to the Golden Section,
sometimes, resounding empty space washed by gales of opinion,
at other times moist-warm with the smell of frankincense
where divine souls rest.

Home is a manuscript framed, beaten out of
love spent and unspent…

Mother

Perhaps I can be like her
the deepest space in me,
boundless where a child can wander endlessly.
Mother, you carrying our home in your bosom
wrapped in stars and love legend and reality,
where each niche houses our special taste
chocolate, candies and sugared fruits.
Your eyes windows to the universe
where I can witness the game of cosmos.
Your hug analgesic erasing darkness,
midnight blues and indigestion.
In wind-shadow and brightness I grow towards you
singing nursery rhymes and then deep words…

Who wants poetry?
You are poetry-tall grasses which keep ancient secrets.
Gypsy’s song, mundane things, book discovered together…
You are poetry-
Rain on soul to unfold, to blossom.

RUINS

Naked and immense
The ruins stare at me.
Here the evenings are still born
children and the rain if falls at all is
light as a grasshopper.

I have my notions about other ruins,
but this one makes me search myself.
Each cry
I utter is lost in the limitless space
then it gathers speed and hits the
frozen walls breaking into an echo.

Perhaps, the story I’m looking for
is buried beneath the mosaics and
in the whispering of the lizards.
Perhaps,
it is there when the
first star shines and the
gods of night draw their curtain
over moon-drenched pillars.

Converse
Contemporary Indian Poetry in English
Celebrating 75 years of India’s Independence.
Edited by Sudeep Sen
Published by Pipa Rann Books And Media U.K. 2022

Sharmila Ray is a poet and non-fiction essayist, writing in English and anthologized and featured in India and abroad. Her poems, and non fictional essays have appeared in various national and international magazines and journals. She is an Associate Professor of the Department of History at City College, Kolkata. She has authored eleven books of poetry. She has edited a bilingual anthology of American and Indian writers-Bridging Continents with Gopal Lahiri. She was on the English Board of Sahitya Akademi (National Body of Letters, Govt. of India), Conducted poetry workshops organized by British Council, Poetry Society of India, Sahitya Akademi..Currently she edits English poetry section of Darabar Jaiga, a noted Bengali journal. She has been reading her poems in India and abroad. Her poems have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Slovene, Hebrew and Spanish and Uzbeck.
She has received many awards for poetry. She has been reading her poems in various National and International Poetry Festivals.