POETRY BY SHAMIK BANERJEE

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. He resides in Assam with his parents. His poems have appeared in The Hypertexts, Shot Glass, The Society of Classical Poets, Fevers of the Mind, Sheepshead Review, Westward Quarterly, Ekstasis, and Autumn Sky Daily, among others. Some of his poems are forthcoming in Willow Review and Big Wing Review.

THE COMPANION

To reach my farm, the trail I pass
Is mostly laid with thick-turfed grass.
The presence of a soundless breeze
Circuits around a row of trees.
No oxes, cows, or squirrels trace
This area—a lonely place.

During the daytime, silence looms
Upon this path. The sun assumes
The role of my true guide and friend
And stays until the pathway’s end.
No wheelbarrows or cycles roll;
Except for me, there’s not a soul.

But in the evening, when I’m bound
For home, a stomping, clomping sound
Is clearly heard along my route,
Emerging from a pair of boots.
Yet there's none when I turn and see!
Who’s this eccentric company?

And all I know is that it walks
With me but neither calls nor talks.
Like this, our daily sunset meeting
Takes place without a formal greeting.
I think it has begun to find
In me a peer—genteel and kind.

What startles me is that it swerves
Right when the pathway steeply curves
Towards a region with an old
Coenobium that’s much extolled.
The friars’ chants come to my ears,
And then the footfall disappears.

INSINUATIONS

I find the Vaastu Yantra* slightly tilted
Each dawn. The flowers of our Palas** tree
That bloomed two days ago have now all wilted.
What is that sniff from our repository?
It’s been here for a week. “Something unclean
dwells in your house,” the old clairvoyant said.
Certainly, some unearthly thing has been
Behind these events. Mother, I’m afraid!
Our act on Highway 10 is swallowing us.
We should not have ignored that lady there
When we ran over her. We should have cared!
Her spasmic body! Oh, that crimson face!
Her “crawling” (on my rearview) still replays
In my night dreams. Ma, she is following us!

*    A tool believed to prohibit negative energies from entering the home.
** A tree that is deemed sacred and lucky in Hinduism.

THE FACE OF OLGA MORETTI

From her gray window, Olga Moretti
Would (during my dawn saunters) smile at me.
She’d stand there at the same time every day
When I would shuttle on the jogger’s way.

Not much about this maiden I had heard.
The townfolk, too, forbade to say a word.
Exhorting me, they’d say, “If you inquire
About her, that might prove adverse and dire.”

Ensuing these, I was too keen to know
The maiden’s annals. Hence, I chose to go
To Rector Frank. His words enlarged my eyes:
A year ago, she met with her demise.

One sundown, while this girl was at her play,
A murderous storm made the Hawthorn sway,
Splitting a knife-like, thick branch from the rest,
Which darted and transfixed her fragile chest.

I claimed that mine and Olga’s eyes did meet.
Debating me, he uttered, “Some conceit
Can be the product of an addled mind.”
To find the truth, I left my fears behind.

It was a starless, somber night in June—
The leaden sky, the dappled, livid moon.
I entered Olga’s yard. The gate I stood
At led me to a minatory wood.

The bosk was what the rector had detailed.
A strange, uncanny air around me trailed.
Within this curtilage, all I could see
Were trellises and that old Hawthorne tree.

The walls were tumbledown, so was the shielding.
A ghoulishness was swarming around the building.
Some eldritch thing was trailing me that night
And echoed everywhere a female shright.

As I was clambering the fractured stair,
There skimmed through me a cold, outlandish air.
Half-hour in her empty room, I spent,
Goggling the spot from where sweet smiles she sent.

Assured all was imagined, I ended
My search and (as the midnight slow descended),
Glanced at the window from my homeward trace—
Saw Olga standing with her smiling face!