Three Poems by Sonnet Mondal: Haunting Life, The Black Caravan and the Rope, My Chained Faith

Three Poems

by Sonnet Mondal

Haunting Life

A call for the ‘night’ amidst the stormy evening
evoke the thoughts of the day when I ravaged
a family and picked up their son out of a typical
kindness; it has haunted me for years till now.
He has grown up and my blood too as brothers;
Their feet and mind moves alike against odds;
Just my blood clots with the pinch from the
revolver that shot down the dears of who is
my child now; perhaps his wisdom was too less then
to perceive the care of near and dear ones.
His eyes still shine as if complaining something
to the walls, streets and stones all around
who never speak of his real family.
Some still creatures and dumb mouths
sound clearer with their silence, with
the way their pretence pop up as oils upon waters.
Perhaps by the time I will be in the bed of my confession,
he will learn forgiveness from some sage;
he will smile to the futility of deaths and births
and I will leave my bed with a flower never
to take birth again for it might be another
wait of sixty years, hoping for resurrection.

The Black Caravan and the Rope

I am tied to the wheels of a black caravan
Flowing like a dead eel fish
Upon the sands of the market where verses
Used to sell well.
I sowed some seeds where vultures pray
For showers of blood
And hunt for the flesh of prose.
Multitude of demons, never do they laugh
But smile the hellish satire
Upon my poverty and break my affluence
Into couplets screaming with ecstasy
For they form the sands which
Thrusts me forward.
The black caravan is my challenge
And the rope my destiny.

My Chained Faith

The far-flung whistle of the colliery
and of the Calcutta-mail
calls me every day after dinner.

The train’s shrill echo and
rhythmic melody of wheels
form a sublime image of
the girl out of my dreams,
waving and smiling;
screaming and crying;
standing and waiting
just for me amidst gasses,
trees and hedges that wave
in solitude and hope.

The curvature of the lopsided land
plays hide and seek along with
the clouds and moon blurring realism.

My belief is incurable and so is
the facade of pleasure that I show
while I follow compellingly,
the whistle of the colliery.

My faith lies in the train,
in the wilderness and
the vaporous figure of my love
while my whims are chained
with famine and society
that may identify me as a mad
once I leave my job and run
into the hazy backwoods.

Sonnet Mondal, an award winning poet and the founder of The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, has written eight collections of poetry. He was featured as one of the Famous Five of Bengali youths by India Today magazine in 2010. His works have appeared in several international literary publications including The Stremez, The Sheepshead Review, The Penguin Review, Two Thirds North, California State Poetry Quarterly, Nth Position and Friction Magazine to name a few. Mondal is the pioneer of the 21 line Fusion Sonnet form of Poetry. His works have translated in Macedonian, Italian, Albanian, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Telugu, and Bengali. Most recently, he has been enlisted as a National Record Holder as “The First Indian to write a new type of Sonnet Poetry” at the Indian Book of Records.

Copyright 2012 Sonnet Mondal,. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.