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POETRY BY SHARMILA MITRA

SHARMILA

Sharmila Mitra was born in the beautiful small town, Jalpaiguri, in the north of West Bengal, India, and is a former senior school English teacher and poet.

She is in love with words, and spends her time thinking how to use words to express her most intimately felt experiences.

Her journey has been rough, but interesting. At present she lives at her ancestral home in Kolkata, with her elderly mother and her rescued fur children. Life is a kaleidoscope to her, although she herself has been in some dark places. Poetry gives her the wind under her wings when she wants to soar above the mundane horrors of urban existence.

NO FACE

A serpentine, wet, shiny
City road, not quite black,
Nor grey or brick red,
Craters galore…
A common city road
Somewhere
In the city where
Black umbrellas
Move, in a dumb motion,
Bobbing up and down
On two legs
Ending in boots, shoes, heels…
Hiding faces…
Cutting through thick traffic,
Blaring horns, wild movements,
Apparently commonplace,
But inevitable as fate.
I stand at my window
And watch those
Black umbrella tops
Bobbing up and down,
Up town down town…
A train whistle from somewhere,
Like a storm of emotions…
No face visible
No eyes no eyes no eyes!
Black umbrellas moving everywhere,
As far as I can see...
Such a black sea of ravens,
In this black city of shadows
Gathering like threats around me!

SAND DUNES

The dark red sand dunes
Of the Desert of Namibia—
That is a reflection of my heart.
The sun always burns bronze here,
A deep dark relentless shining bronze;
The same sun that warms
And spreads the light
For the growth of greenery
Elsewhere in the world…
Yes, the same sun,
But in an invincible warrior armour.

However, the Desert sun is good
To my desolate heart that prays
For the rain, in vain.
The sun shining a deep red
Mentors me, tells me to keep my eyes
On the shifting sand grains
Under my bare burning feet,
Deep in the hot sand.
Standing with my feet buried
In the red sand of the Namibian Desert,
Feeling the excruciating, scorching pain,
Is the only way to want to rise above
My deep-rooted misunderstanding
That the rain will come if I pray hard enough…
The sand dunes shift ever so slowly,
Whispering… and…whispering,
Telling ancient tales of gut-wrenching tragedy.

The sand suns in this Desert,
This red desert of my heart, gently rock me;
I feel a strange connection
Between this red Desert in the land of Namibia,
And the vast red desert of my heart,
Both waiting for scant tufts of green grass
To grow, to beautify the sand dunes…
The rain may not come so easily,
But, my thoughts…
They can turn the desert,
With banks upon banks of sand dunes,
Into a home for a powerful hope.
My heart has sand dunes shifting,
But, I never stop praying for the rain.