Poems by Amanita Sen

The Scab

The first scab after a bad fall
and the bruise on your knees
taught you all you needed
to know about inevitable healing.

The brownness of it felt strange.
Your wooden table had that color—
you noticed and wished the scab
had its elegance, its resilience too.

You let your fingers gently feel
the serrated mound; its roughness
reflected your brokenness, you thought.
“At least the scab knows—relieved!”

Just when you’d almost warmed up to
its presence, the pain beneath not
raking you like it once did,
it suddenly vanished from sight.

Only a scar now, holding the memory
of the fall—fading, as it should.

The Bird-Life

Other than swooping down
for food—for the body needs it—

I will perch on branches,
lintels, chimney-heads, wherever

I fancy, spoiled for choice.
At the beck and call of none

but the sun, it will be
a bird’s day for me—living in the while.

Oh, I will peck back the kind bird
who nudges me gently with his beak.

I’ll share with him the occasional booty
of grains, the sky’s silence, my little space.

All this, until we are lost to each other,
spreading our wings to hit the sky again.

The Similar Act

Because it does the same,
it knows when I’m doing so—

though my actions cannot be
seen, my hand and mouth not

involved in the act the same
way his are, when he does so.

But the pet dog knows, and his
large eyes express consolation,

concern in equal measure, when
I too lick my unseen wounds.

The bird on the buoy

The buoys lay on the
body of the river,
equidistant—like
vertebrae bones—
and a beautiful bird sat on
each of them, as would
your playful finger ponder
meditatively on the tautness
of the mounds, circling them
until they unfailingly awakened
to the whispering touch.

And in the middle of an
explosive kiss that makes up
for years of separation,
you smilingly ask,
“Can the bird please keep on playing
on the buoys?”

Son-like

We call them political murders—
those killed under cover, or in stark
daylight, when the nation gives its mandate.
As if these killings aren’t death enough,
their status is almost scoffed at.
Their way of living, questioned with indignation.
The pictures of their sunburnt bodies
get half-eyed attention for half a day.

I have skimmed through such news
over morning tea, with perfect ease.
The aroma of the liquid overpowering
the stench of death—convincingly.
Every time—except once, when I watched
with sweating palms and distended eyes.

That boy, with freshly grown
stubble—so looked like my son.

Inside the cemetery

In a city starving of corners to love,
they step inside a sleeping cemetery
where lovers make out quietly.

No one ignores like the dead man
does, the stories of the secret highs
and lows of this mortal play on earth.

They feel a strong kinship with the tree
whose top is lost to the last storm.
Brokenness holds for them a familiar charm.

They choose the dead leaves to step on.
The softness feels right on their tired feet,
as if the leaves know of their limbs’ history
of aches and cuts, like the way death
knows about the life-chapters inside out.

As darkness descends they fade into
the city lights, hearing the leaves whisper
to the selves they left within the walls to rest.
They are sometimes seen walking inside,
the moonlight attests.