Baul Song for Helen

Baul Song for Helen

When the evening’s dreams turned into blood

and revealed the wounds on Nero’s flute,

she undressed her soul to the winds

and set the sky ablaze with her anklets.

Night crept in through the sleeve of war

the tower of skies burnt in blue,

a thousand blades scarred the moon

and drenched the song with her purple tears.

I have smelt the glass sweat in her navel

surging with phantom prophecies;

singing Cohen in summer twilight,

awaiting a salt apocalypse.

The joker points at the ship in the painting,

drowning beneath the burning skies;

The Goddess of War in her nuclear cockpit,

flying a fighter plane above the red Ganges.

Then they saw Helen,

softly perched in her chariot of songs,

as she flew past the Kolkata sky

smoking Nazi cigarettes.

Snow dreams

(Thanks to Inam Hussain Mullick for the prose style)



She travels like the night…..wind-swept smiles of the river. The bullet speaks a soft prayer and dies without a funeral…..
a funeral of the moons who were killed in my song last summer….the radio knows their secret when winter hallucinates.
And yet she laughs like a woman….laughs like the wind that shields the door on her skin……ancient layers and lyres of time…
tonight the child shall find a mother……like the violin finds her chords of rain


Tonight she will find her womb……..hidden with dust beneath her wedding saree……and pray to the Gods for rain. She might
also stab the sky for rain…….the poet slides into her mouth and drowns in her storm……the madmen come to her for comfort..
the demons dance with amnesia on her tongue…….she can’t remember the name of her next child.


We are seated at the coffee table……remembering politicians who killed her brother….the drink provides a therapy…..it travels
through her clothes and body…….like the painters orbiting time……travelling blood-lines….like her sweat chases me on thoughtless
nights……….abort the moon


So you’re the same poet…….she asks me with a touch of secrecy…...who slew my children at midnight……..in the neon lit whorehouse….
who stole my wedding saree…….who danced with me in the rain……….who hid the child inside the radio……and let the violin stroke my
womb? So you’re the same demon who suckled mirrors…..licked me blind…..and murdered Banalata Sen?


Fuck the rain…….fuck the song…….fuck the rainsongs…...we shall live the century cloistered in the walls of a kiss……..let
prostitutes rule the poem now……winter will bring a new wind poet who torments your eyes………and crawls through
your hair like war……time will heal my letters……roses will heal the wine…….and the violin drink the moon.

Angela

1. A Room in the rain

lights that shimmer in pain,

your anklets stab the silence

your face cracks down

in cinders of snow

as my smiles go up in mist

and we are floating again,

in a song-boat

on the fringes of this night

Angela,

these tunes are false

that snake in through your window

with the soot of the city

your hair streams down

like the raging skyline,

your sleeves are dripping with rain

your fingers scurry with joy

for a last shelter,

as I document your touch

in peace

Angela,

let’s burgle these clouded doors

that stand between us now

like night patrollers

and unhide the soft contours

of veiled delight

let reflections change forever

as we manufacture love

in this rain room

and when the night shrinks in sleep,

you shall search for a poet

who lives in songs

while I travel

through old diaries

for the ruins of your smiles

2. Last Station of love

Angela,

what was bothering you that day

when you took the night train

at the last junction?

light years in thought;

we lived a month on missed calls

and nothing else

whatever was left in the city

except the ghosts of a few poets

and nude strangers?

Angela,

we’re waiting

at the last station

of love

we’ve been waiting for years now

and colliding at times

in dream

when time breaths

in tiny splinters of sight

like another illusion

or the river curls up

at the solstice of vision

Angela,

we shall then meet across the waters

of this tiny blue opera glass

and try to read our past

in the fast headlight

of some passing vehicle

we shall glide on sounds

across the harbours of this city

we shall haunt

the windows of sleep

this December

as the moon

like a snowrose sickle,

hangs from her hinges