Valentine’s Day
So much for Valentine’s day
and for all the red roses and red cakes, bunnies and
cards…
Laden with fragrance, fluttering glances and
anonymous agonies,
love rides on the wind, draped in a shawl of cobweb
–clouds, descending
on the city, interweaving with coffee, almond
biscotti and stale air conditioning.
In a dimly lit suburb she dreams, making her way
through midnight diaries
extending her today to tomorrow and syncing her
yesterday with the present.
In malls lovers loll in beer, burger and
hallucinating smoke, each a small god
holding love
tight in an hour-glass.
On the fifth floor of a housing complex under a
shaded lamp, a scholar writes
a discourse on love beginning with in other words…
Precisely at that moment love snatches a line of
Emily Bronte to anoint-
Cold in the
earth- and the deep snow piled above thee
Between daybreak and end of the day
Love slides immaculately into many sheaths.
Perhaps, love is trivia
perhaps, love is lost
in the labyrinth of language.Bio:
Sharmila Ray is a poet and non-fiction essayist, anthologized and
featured in India and abroad. Her poems, short stories and non fictional essays
have appeared in various national and international magazines and journals. She teaches in City
College, Kolkata under Calcutta University where she is an Associate Professor
and Head of the Department of History. She was on the English Board of Sahitya
Akademi. She was the editor of The Journal
(Poetry Society India) and looked after a column Moving Hand Writes, Times Of India, Kolkata. She writes in English
and has authored eight books of poetry; Earth
Me And You (Granthalaya, Kolkata 1996), A
Day With Rini (Poetry And Art 1998), Down
Salt Water (Poets Foundation, Kolkata 1999), Living Other Lives (Minerva Press, New Delhi, Mumbai, London 2004),
It’s Fantasy, It’s Reality (Punaschya,
Kolkata 2010), With Salt And Brine
(Yeti Publishers, Calicut 2013), Windows
(Blank Rune Press, Australia 2016), Scrawls
And Scribbles (Hawakal Publishers, Kolkata, 2016). She conducted poetry
workshops organized by British Council, Poetry Society of India, Sahitya
Akademi. She had been invited to International Struga Poetry Evenings, in
Macedonia where she represented India and International poets meet in Kerala to
share stage with Ben Okri. She was the only poet writing in English from West
Bengal to participate in VAK –the
first poetry biennial held in New Delhi.
She has been reading her poems in various parts of the country. Her poems
have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Manipuri, Slovene, Hebrew and
Spanish. Currently she is working on a
manuscript of non-fictional essays.
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