{"id":17544,"date":"2025-06-15T05:27:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T05:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/?p=17544"},"modified":"2025-06-15T06:06:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T06:06:33","slug":"posts-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/posts-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems by Amanita Sen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Scab<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first scab after a bad fall
\nand the bruise on your knees
\ntaught you all you needed
\nto know about inevitable healing.<\/p>\n

The brownness of it felt strange.
\nYour wooden table had that color\u2014
\nyou noticed and wished the scab
\nhad its elegance, its resilience too.<\/p>\n

You let your fingers gently feel
\nthe serrated mound; its roughness
\nreflected your brokenness, you thought.
\n\u201cAt least the scab knows\u2014relieved!\u201d<\/p>\n

Just when you\u2019d almost warmed up to
\nits presence, the pain beneath not
\nraking you like it once did,
\nit suddenly vanished from sight.<\/p>\n

Only a scar now, holding the memory
\nof the fall\u2014fading, as it should.<\/p>\n

The Bird-Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

Other than swooping down
\nfor food\u2014for the body needs it\u2014<\/p>\n

I will perch on branches,
\nlintels, chimney-heads, wherever<\/p>\n

I fancy, spoiled for choice.
\nAt the beck and call of none<\/p>\n

but the sun, it will be
\na bird\u2019s day for me\u2014living in the while.<\/p>\n

Oh, I will peck back the kind bird
\nwho nudges me gently with his beak.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll share with him the occasional booty
\nof grains, the sky\u2019s silence, my little space.<\/p>\n

All this, until we are lost to each other,
\nspreading our wings to hit the sky again.<\/p>\n

The Similar Act<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because it does the same,
\nit knows when I\u2019m doing so\u2014<\/p>\n

though my actions cannot be
\nseen, my hand and mouth not<\/p>\n

involved in the act the same
\nway his are, when he does so.<\/p>\n

But the pet dog knows, and his
\nlarge eyes express consolation,<\/p>\n

concern in equal measure, when
\nI too lick my unseen wounds.<\/p>\n


\nThe bird on the buoy <\/strong><\/p>\n

The buoys lay on the
\nbody of the river,
\nequidistant\u2014like
\nvertebrae bones\u2014
\nand a beautiful bird sat on
\neach of them, as would
\nyour playful finger ponder
\nmeditatively on the tautness
\nof the mounds, circling them
\nuntil they unfailingly awakened
\nto the whispering touch.<\/p>\n

And in the middle of an
\nexplosive kiss that makes up
\nfor years of separation,
\nyou smilingly ask,
\n\u201cCan the bird please keep on playing
\non the buoys?\u201d<\/p>\n

Son-like<\/strong><\/p>\n

We call them political murders\u2014
\nthose killed under cover, or in stark
\ndaylight, when the nation gives its mandate.
\nAs if these killings aren\u2019t death enough,
\ntheir status is almost scoffed at.
\nTheir way of living, questioned with indignation.
\nThe pictures of their sunburnt bodies
\nget half-eyed attention for half a day.<\/p>\n

I have skimmed through such news
\nover morning tea, with perfect ease.
\nThe aroma of the liquid overpowering
\nthe stench of death\u2014convincingly.
\nEvery time\u2014except once, when I watched
\nwith sweating palms and distended eyes.<\/p>\n

That boy, with freshly grown
\nstubble\u2014so looked like my son.<\/p>\n

Inside the cemetery <\/strong><\/p>\n

In a city starving of corners to love,
\nthey step inside a sleeping cemetery
\nwhere lovers make out quietly. <\/p>\n

No one ignores like the dead man
\ndoes, the stories of the secret highs
\nand lows of this mortal play on earth. <\/p>\n

They feel a strong kinship with the tree
\nwhose top is lost to the last storm.
\nBrokenness holds for them a familiar charm. <\/p>\n

They choose the dead leaves to step on.
\nThe softness feels right on their tired feet,
\nas if the leaves know of their limbs\u2019 history
\nof aches and cuts, like the way death
\nknows about the life-chapters inside out. <\/p>\n

As darkness descends they fade into
\nthe city lights, hearing the leaves whisper
\nto the selves they left within the walls to rest.
\nThey are sometimes seen walking inside,
\nthe moonlight attests. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanita Sen, author of three volumes of English poetry, is also a translator and critic. She volunteers in organizing literary meets, practices in the field of mental health, and resides in Kolkata<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-111"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17555,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17544\/revisions\/17555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abahaman.com\/abahaman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}