Two Poems by Soumyaroop Majumdar
At Edgecourt
Disinterested suns rise from the east.
A leaf, red
and crusted darker at the base, lies
far from its tree.
The listener across the fence
is satisfied soon and the song loses vigour.
Listening is not witnessing.
We close our eyes and attend
to the body, the gestures
of the hand, its stabs
and flourishes, as it chisels a raag
out of thin air. The voice tugs on the skeins
purled and cat-pawed all over
the garden. The tune emerges from salami slices:
the wrought iron, the Braille of recent rain,
the Rorschach breath—
all swifts, martins, swallows.
The song is snow, fresh and
smudged brown by a year. The notes rise and dig—
swan and boar. The bulging glissandos
move radially, hoofing at
the ground to wrench the dovetailed fibres apart.
We are received by a pinpricked sky, the tingled foliage.
Stranger Sonnet
Perhaps it’s a matter of looking into the eyes of things
and letting the traffic between clusters carry language, trust
that beyond the milk of words
lies the Brownian nudge
of this against that.
Never celebrate. Its rapid knockabout
leaves no space for making space (that hollow
where water may seep into),
brings piles of dishes and next-morning sheets.
There is no start but an approaching, and seeing
is anchored in such silences—the gables, the eaves,
a parked Nissan, the darkened windows, the red berries
I cannot name because I am new to them.
Soumyaroop Majumdar is a writer born and raised in Kolkata, India. He took up the writing of poetry after a few years as a maker of television shows in Mumbai. He recently graduated with an MA in Studies in Poetry from Durham University. This is the first publication of his work.
Khatleen Minerve was born and lives in Mauritius. She’s a passionate portrait photographer who started taking shots six years ago and has been working as a freelancer for the past two. On the way, she earned a Law and Management degree. She loves to enjoy a cup of tea every hour or so.
