Three Poems

    By Sonnet Mondal

    Birth of a Hill

    Shining through the cracks of life
    the warmth of wisdom and resolve

    dances like a flaming fire, and then
    moves like magma to settle

    and solidify blanketing
    a life exposed to harshness

    and a hill is born — with its rugged allure
    hosting the molten inside its womb.

    If I Could

    If I were a travelling air
    without any bony cage,
    moral circuits and routes

    blowing to the will of paddy fields
    smelling the sexual union
    of grass roots with wet soil

    I would swoop and lift the infant souls
    of dead harvested crops

    fetching them to their seeds
    and allow them to breathe me again.

    The Lost Mango Tree

    The mango tree which I reared
    is lost today   somewhere
    in the jungle of my wishes.

    I used to throw whole mangoes
    in our backyard
    to see them grow up into trees.

    Not a single leaf sprouted
    except from a half-eaten one.

    After watering it in its infancy
    I became engaged
    wining and dining with my life.

    After years — today
    a mangrove in our backyard
    shaded my memories
    from the hard sun of forgetfulness.

    I wish   I had left myself
    to the charity of wilderness.

    Sonnet Mondal is an Indian poet, editor, and author of An Afternoon in my Mind (Copper Coin, 2022), Karmic Chanting (Copper Coin, 2018), and Ink & Line (Dhauli Books, 2018). Founder director of Chair Poetry Evenings – Kolkata’s International Poetry Festival, Mondal serves as the managing editor of Verseville. His recent works have appeared in the Harper’s Bazaar, Virginia Quarterly Review, Words Without Borders, Singing in the Dark (Penguin Random House), Luvina magazine (University of Guadalajara, Mexico), La Otra (University of Mexico), Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Short Edition-Michigan State University Libraries, Kyoto Journal, Potomac Review, Poetry Salzburg Review (University of Salzburg), Mascara Literary Review, and Honest Ulsterman among others. Editor of the Indian section of Lyrikline, Haus Fur Poesie, Berlin, he has been a guest editor of Words Without Borders, Poetry at Sangam and Radar Magazine. His works have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Italian, Chinese, Turkish, Slovak, Macedonian, French, Russian, Slovenian, Hungarian, and Arabic.

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