RIJUREKH CHAKRAVARTY - Featured Poet

LETHE 

Memories are blank!

Dreams crisscross to be fulfilled with perplexity.

Infinity doesn’t care to put a mark on the pages.

When the craft of language, learned, is wasted,

Such nights come back

Amidst the sound of the crickets,

In the imagery of a palpable moon,

In the passionate urge for art,  

And the birds, I see, switch nests

Carrying dreams on their wings -

The dreams that would be wiped out

By the first rays of daylight.

That’s the rule of Lethe,

You know, Dorian,

Don’t you?

And if someday,

In a gloom as profound as sin,

I fail to recall even the oblivion,

Tell me, Achilles,

Should I be grateful to you?

Should I?

Translation: Dipankar Mukhopadhyay

TO BE PUBLISHED SHORTLY IN THE PEN INDIA JOURNAL

Bio

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Rijurekh Chakravarty started his writing career with Bengali poems in his college days. His first poem was published in the DESH magazine when he has 19. His first book of poem got published in the year 1992. Till now he has six books of poems under his belt. He has been awarded with as many as five literary prizes and honours. He has also penned three novels in Bengali, one of which, published during the Kolkata International Book Fair this year, is a crime thriller. Another novel by him, written 22 years back, is going to be published in book form in August this year.