door step, stairway, bannisters landings
Poet Boudhayan Mukherjee writes a poem for Outlook.
door step, stairway, bannisters landings
railings, more steps, anti-gravitational?
upwards, dark corridors, alleys, rooms
without walls
windows shut forever, oblong fever of walls
termites, moss, dampness, Lord Clive
ceilings with holes shot by heroic Bagha Jatin Mukherjee
stairway leading to a star gazed heritage roof?
the one room attic where my forefather hid
and jumped to the next roof?
when the police surrounded?
that surreal house neighbours shunned
which will become a shopping mall soon
a marvellous sodomy of pent-up grief
the roof now lay like a forlorn graveyard
down below the bustling street
must have forgotten the valour of this house.
(Boudhayan Mukherjee is a bilingual poet, essayist , and a translator, who has taught creative writing in English at Indira Gandhi National Open University?and has authored five books of poetry and translations.)