Poems by
Gagan Pattanayak

MINU – Anniversary

a poem by Gagan Pattanayak

Last year’s wedding card I took so much pain to collect
is here.
Is there under the light
And the symbols and the slokas
still gleaming,
still there my pain reflects-
All my scrubbing all my rubbing-
the card still new.

What is there?
Nobody invited me
as if,
if they had, I would have.
This card is not mine,
I picked it up, a year back, when the guest
was with the host,
when her tears,
my tears of yesterdays
have left a mark,
a mark of loss-
as water when it turns steam.

Like a thief, stealing his dream
when you do not care being caught,
I laid my hand on it,
where the guest had thrown
looked at it,
as if this is my last
and then put it there
where they say your heart is,
where I feel mine had been.

SAD??
someone is haunting me,
her absence, her presence!
Existence is independent,
self sufficient in a peculiar way.
It seems if a leaf were to exist
there must be a twig,
and that is not.

She is here, there everywhere,
anywhere
as shadow,
as an existence without existing
as an enigma,
a part of thou,
now needed-now unwanted-utterly.
In its own way a root of your survival.

If today I cannot cry,
if tears will not come
I won’t die,
After a year,
after a marriage
MINU
for you – if I say
it will be lying
for me this scribbling.