Amarendra Khatua’s anthology “Garden of Enchanted Stones & other poems” encircle around love, longing, exile, despair and the ephemerality of existence. Half-made songs of love and living, as the poet says in one of his poems. These poems “mix memories with haunting words and etch superb pictures of love and despair, waiting and melancholia,” says Argentinian poet Graciela Aroaoz.
Dr Khatua is currently Director-General, Indian Council for Cultural Relations. A veteran diplomat, he is a prolific poet who writes with the same finesse in Oriya and English.
Here are three poems from “Garden of Enchanted Stones.”
Remembering
I must be remembered
As the one who had
Never been celebrated
Inside your cryptic signs
Palpitating
As dreams
And always kept aside
As angst to be
Sorted out intimately as personal.
I must be forgiven
By the time bodies would be lying
Scattered
Consummated
Yet never revived
By the unforgiving
Moments
Of your nubile hunger
Constructed
Out of immortal artefacts
Sans your permission.
In the seasons of my fall
Silence was coiling
Like the aroma of unknown
Flowers inside your eyes.
Painted silvery clouds
Hug under a chalk white
Erotic moon. you spoke in
The silkiest voice of the
Dark inviting night. your words
Gargled in the throbs of
Asking for love and
Flanked my waiting moments
In a cloying stupor, of some
Halfmade dreams and rest in
Pure parched skin hunger
And I retreated.
Emotions had no limbs, no pretext,
Yet my bones receded in sighs.
The seeking palm remained unopened
For promises that our flesh
Could have woven. My eyes
Turned away on their own
Betrayal of physical essences, while
You waited.
Now neither can I retrieve my
Wanton footsteps into the
Garden of your unadorned invitation,
Nor can you wait with preserved
Eternity for recognition of my
Love simply untrespassed
In the seasons of my fall.
Half made songs
Words I stitch
As precious wounds
Words I sketch as
The dark pictures of losses
Mostly are not
The serenading verses
That I perfect
To wing out
And touch your soul
That is why the best poetry
Of mine stays outside my
Own reach
And I struggle
your acceptance
Of my falsetto tune
Accommodated inside your own
Half made songs of love and living.
Author Profile
- India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) is an emerging think tank and a media-publishing company focused on international affairs & the India Story. Centre for Global India Insights is the research arm of India Writes Network. To subscribe to India and the World, write to editor@indiawrites.org. A venture of TGII Media Private Limited, a leading media, publishing and consultancy company, IWN has carved a niche for balanced and exhaustive reporting and analysis of international affairs. Eminent personalities, politicians, diplomats, authors, strategy gurus and news-makers have contributed to India Writes Network, as also “India and the World,” a magazine focused on global affairs.
Latest entries
DiplomacyApril 23, 2024Resetting West Asia, re-booting the world, but not fast enough: T.S. Tirumurti- India and the WorldApril 22, 2024India’s G20 Legacy: Mainstreaming Africa, Global South in global agenda
- DiplomacyApril 10, 2024Diplomat-author Lakshmi Puri pitches for women power at LSR
- India and the WorldApril 6, 2024UN envoy pitches to take India’s solutions to the world stage
