CINDER-WORDS: RANGEET SENGUPTA Rangeet Sengupta has completed a MPhil. and is presently pursuing a Ph.D in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His research primarily focuses on the sculpting of South Asian prose aesthetics in the 18th & 19th centuries and the ways in which these developments were buffeted by colonial discourses of surveillance and gaze. He is interested in South Asian traditions of discourse and erotico-mysticism.  Next Poem:....................................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

 
Nine-fifteen is the time for runaways.
Mice and rat and lizards creep
Through your veins,
Thump in your arteries,
Shove
And gnaw
Through your ribs—

You grope for your chappals
In the kabab-scented alley,
Meandering
Through intestines
Of forsaken palaces.

That old hag with
A furrowed face,
Selling fireflies
At the crossroads,
Blurts as you fumble–
The Bypass, dada?

No, this doesn’t lead anywhere.

We haven’t traced it for days.
We haven’t been there for centuries.
We have sent forth explorers—
They have returned with paper-moths,
And Cretaceous birds,
And a pinch of loneliness
In green coffee cups.
Would you smell glow-worms?
Five for ten?

Nine-fifteen is a time for runaways.
I stood there, in the middle
Of that non-existent Bypass—
Cars vanishing like fireflies,
Elves encircling,
Rivers from distant hinterlands
Babbling mad prophecies.
And a shower of Poinciana blossoms
In the quenching darkness of
An April night—
Whispered incessantly

Those words

That I have never written,
Will never write
For you.

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