They married, had children, and built, homes on quarries of coal—
The years rolled by, the years rolled by, until the bells forgot to toll …
There is a saying, in some distant land: no saying is too divine!
Why then in a Nietzschean line, even the profane wrecks your soul?
Obsessed with images of feeling selves, we stopped feeling ourselves—
When love ceased to be the dessert, we ordered it in the finger bowl!
Some English prefer the received touch; Americans use rhotic sounds;
The Irish use a bit of both—for the Bengali, there’s only machher jhol.
You say none hears my ghazals, why hear them then you must?
Alas, are you so unsure, of what you will disdain, and what extol?
Safar, let’s never be bitter about—this world or even its weary ways—
Where billions value with their millions, fragments of a forsaken whole!
Photograph Courtesy: WikiImages, Pixabay.
Arup K. Chatterjee 