Old-Fashioned Man
Not a single crumbling house will remain.People on the pavements, hawkers, garbage,
Only then, a city painted on a scroll, ding-dong.
For the household fish to be cut,
a ash-boti is needed,
not a knife or a dagger.
This city, you see, was once,
in primordial times,
a forest, where deer and tigers
also lived. Keep thinking about it.
Catwalks on the ramp,
soft, gentle feet, within the dreams
of sitting beside the lotus pond,
rural Bengal is becoming far too genteel,
chairs, tables, curtains,
birthday cakes,
Bhadra-month Bhadu Puja, people
dancing and singing, swaying their waists
in courtyards,
a little rice, a little money.
I keep gazing at the pond,
the afternoon pond.
I am an old-fashioned man.
Sparrows and mynas, walking in tiny steps,
squirrels racing past,
the inarticulate map of nature.
I don't know why I am so frightened,
I don't know why I am so delighted,
I don't know, the birthing room, the constellations,
I am thinking about the price of everyday things,
thinking about an ordinary life,
thinking about an ordinary world.
Just now, I had a cup of tea,
a cigarette
Poetry by sinha murari
Read 10 times
Written on 2026-09-06 at 04:56
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