Lopamudra presents a series of prose-poems or short vignettes in blank verse based on certain long-standing images of Kolkata, and the US. Here’s the second one of the series, ‘Prinsep Ghat’, exclusively for Different Truths.

Some days I am just a rusted yellow, a drooping, crumpled mess, the waters lashing on my
eyelashes, a heart-rending tale.

Some days I am just the flames, the choking silence of the pains of others, my palms cupping
the indelible marks of bygone days, scalding. 

Some days I slip into the liquid sound of poems and boatmen’s songs, my holy texts trailing
after, smudged, blown away in smithereens.

Some days, the water feels smug-clean in my sleepy troughs and creases, some days, I am the
blood and the shards, the shameless smoke and the cigarette stubs, the poison that whirls in
my subterranean flow. 

I know some evenings, when your breath brushes past mine, and we are kindred souls,
burning in each other’s fire. I know while you dig me deep with your nails, the dusk of death
is in your skin, amid the living, breathing mess. 

Some days when the birds chirp and the holy crows caw in your mossy banks, you sing a
song that once was your mother’s chore.

Today, you rinse your mouth with it as you chant the holy ‘Om’, and return home, in your
parted lips, it hangs, a primal hum.

©Lopamudra Banerjee

Links of other poems in this series:

http://139.59.80.127/literature/poems/college-street/

©Lopamudra Banerjee

Links of other poems in this series:

http://139.59.80.127/literature/poems/college-street/

Lopamudra Banerjee

Lopamudra Banerjee is an author, poet, translator, and editor with nine solo books and six anthologies spanning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has earned recognition in India and the USA. Recent notable books include a collaborative poetry collection with Priscilla Rice, We Are What We Are (1st Prize, New York Book Festival 2024); her translation of Mallika Sengupta’s Kabir Bouthan as The Bard and His Sister-in-Law (Honorary Mention, Paris and Hollywood Book Festivals 2024); and Draupadi theke Nijashwi (2025).