(Inspired by Pictures from the Camera of Siddhartha Chakraborti)
A sky as gray as unvisited archives,
The river’s grammar is tawdry, and it connives,
With boats that lie like quiet marginal verbs, and taut,
With prows pointed to nothing, or lessons never taught.
A single pole stands like a punctuation in the ash,
The dusk falls on it like a lash—
The bosun’s silhouette, like a comma moving slow,
Tying small phrases to a fog too loath to say hello.
A bridge slumbers at a distance, with ribs of iron and rust,
Chimneys in the far wood sneeze a blackened, slow gust,
Of smoke that writes a thin question mark,
The trees keep their counsel and a catalogue of the dark.
The bank is a page ruled with footsteps and the dun-
Colored reeds, with shadows of roofs and a faint, eaten sun,
Of oars and empty matchboxes or a worn-out midnight song,
That though intoxicated, still longs for a right for every wrong.
And, if you stand, by these quiet thefts of our yesterdays,
Counting the small economies of the castaways,
The riverbank proofreads the fumes with unfinished light,
The untrodden boats nod silently, implacable and right.
Photograph Courtesy: Siddhartha Chakraborti (siddharthachakraborti@gmail.com).
Arup K. Chatterjee 