An intense love poem, by Prof Sonjoy, exclusively for Different Truths.
Your play of passion has to be through me
Thus you have descended
Without me, o my beloved
Your Love would have in futility ended
Through me you have spread your carnival of delights
Within my heart, dance your festivals of lights
Within me your desires vibrate
In a million forms sensate insensate.
You kissed my lips as a petal’s soft dew
Tousled my hair in your storm, passions grew,
As a beloved you came in delectable forms
Reflected your Love in me, and withdrew.
So why is it that in the games that you play
Always out of reach you stay,
Just minutely, subtly, fractionally away.
With inflamed desires you leave me enslaved
Then left deprived, by you I am saved.
This, your cruel mercy, I have gleaned over years
Without asking, you have given so much
Passion, laughter, ecstasy, tears.
You tempt me to seek your pleasures
But cruel you, you subtly hide your treasures
This, I know, is your test, your mercy
To perfect me, to make me worthy
Layers of half desires, imperfect embraces,
Through unkind cuts you chisel away
O supreme potter, your outer hands hit hard
While inner palms in deep support
Always and constantly stay
To shape me for the ultimate end,
Where with open arms you wait for me,
Where all roads meet, at the final bend.
Photo from the Internet
Prof Sonjoy Dutta Roy retired as Professor/Head, Department of English, Dean of Arts, and Coordinator of Centres for Theatre/Films and Media Studies at the University of Allahabad. Senior Fulbright Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, Fellow at Louisiana State University, and UGC Visiting Fellow at Jadavpur University. His papers on theatre/poetry featured in leading journals. Over three decades, he directed Indian/American plays and lectured at UC Berkeley, UConn, Tufts, and more. Poetry collections: The Absent Words (1998), Into Grander Space (2005), Diary Poems (2012), and the forthcoming Of Blood and Book. Poems shortlisted by the British Council, the Poetry Society of India, Chandrabhaga, and Kavya Bharti. He is our National Editor: Academics.
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I see a pinch of love sonnets of Shakespeare.. Some where may be what we read is reflected in our writings. True for this work of art. Beautifully crafted and mesmerizing.
Exquisite portraiture of love both physical and spiritual. Like Tagore whose beloved could always be the human and the divine, you too have woven both beautifully in your poem. So like the Radha Krishna Leela.
The corporal love begins through half senses and, in the course of itself, gradually takes the shape of divine perfection. The images of festivals of light and supreme potter are very appealing and full layered meanings… An intense journey of physical mortality to spiritual immortality.
Loved the use of apostrophe in the beginning and in the end. The personal absence finally yields to an eternal absence.