Poems by Lopamudra Basu
Unfettered Flight If only the earth was the unfettered expanse of cerulean autumn sky, And like a flock of Canadian geese formed in an aerodynamic V we could fly to follow the warm sun, drink from other lands’ lakes, without suitcases and passports. If only we were together this autumn like geese chortling in delight As they leave behind the plucked corn husks, the fallen leaves, the worm bitten apples and the young puppy gazing at their joyous ascent, shedding in flight terrestrial sickness and the season’s damp refuse. If only we could soar into summer with our own brood like three generations that once frolicked on the waves in Puri. But now like parrots in the cages of our screens Our feathers clipped like songbirds, we see and smile through wrought iron wires, longing to gather and fly with family, like the geese in September flight.
Heirlooms There are some things lost forever in transcontinental travel moving homes, cities, and lives. Some things we can no longer trace or touch— Where is the sitar my husband played long before we met? Loaned once to a young cousin and then fading into oblivion. Only a few fragments remain of his life as a junior artist in All India Radio. Where is my uncle’s esraj that he played in the evenings of my youth? The uncle who archived all available recordings of rarest concerts and family conversations, including my first words on tape Now his children scattered, his house in disarray with nobody to ask where the esraj went. My mother’s harmonium and tanpura still live in her room although the tabla broke from my errant handling many years ago. She has not sung a song of Tagore or tuned her tanpura in years and I have not learned to play, but when I touch the strings, I can feel the breath of her father who tightened the strings before I was born and dreamed of me as a keeper of tales.
The Earth Suite When Galileo looked through his convex lenses four hundred and thirteen years ago, the moons of Jupiter the rings of Saturn ravished his heart and ours ever since; then with Herschel we travelled further into the icy darkness to Uranus and Neptune. When Holst, a hundred years ago, composed his suite of the planets, we saluted Mars, Venus, and even tiny Mercury. But no suite was composed for Earth’s blue waters even after we saw her majestic ascent above the Moon’s horizon. Earth, our only home, unsung in symphonies like a mother suckled till her rivers turn to ravines, her snowy tresses a sliver contouring her bare head, her green girdle shorn to stone and dirt, bereft of birds. If I had the gift of conjuring sound to sense I would pick the shrill cry of the iridescent peacock before a monsoon dance, the sound of April rain, gentle on a slushy puddle of old snow and soil the whispering breeze from the Bay of Bengal, tender on sun-drenched tropical skin. Not the waves of a hurricane but the gentle ebb and tide of water on a sunny palm fringed shore the sounds of mating frogs before showers, the promise of more rain for thirsty wells, restoring Earth to her fruitful plenitude. No more the wild shrieks of despair and loss but the hope of renewed verdure, birdsong and the flutter of wings breaking the silent canopy of trees.
About the Poet:
Lopamudra Basu is Professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Stout. Her poetry has been published in journals like Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Barstow and Grand, Dhaka Review, Postcolonial Text and in the anthologies Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi) and Best Asian Poetry 2021-2022 (Kitaab) among others. She reviews poetry. non-fiction and fiction for World Literature Today and India Currents. She lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
She can be reached basul@uwstout.edu
