Abin Chakraborty | The Wise Owl I Aqua & Gold Edition

The fabric inside is torn.

Needle and thread, cement and bricks

All things fail to mend all those gaps

Left by the edges of past.

In time they'll fill with water or soil

And host some insects and expanding moss

With flowers and cacti and patches of grass

Where butterflies whisper and fly.

So I nurse these holes

and redraw my shapes

And discarding dreams of untainted wholes

Curate with fragments new shores.

A query, a smile, some unspoken words

The trembling of lips in a moment misplaced

Such are the remnants that cling.

They glisten as shards

From a mirror now smashed

Which no little whole would form.

Yet with them new blankets I weave

That shield against winters to come.

At times they are tents, with canopy of stars

That magic and thrill will conjure.

Or they are castles that baffle and thwart

All those cannons of chance and age

And glow with light through the dark.

So I cherish and guard these remnants with care

And hope for a time of candor and warmth

When in the alchemy of life's sudden turns

All that is broken will mend.

Abin Chakraborty teaches English literature in Chandernagore College, West Bengal, India. He has been writing for several years and his poems have been published in Indian and International publications such as Café Dissensus, Rupkatha Journal, Muse India, Pine Cone Review, among others. He is also the author of the scholarly monograph, Popular Culture, published by Orient Blackswan (2019). His scholarly articles have also been published in journals and anthologies from India and abroad. His collection of poems Unlettered Longings was published recently. He is the editor of Postcolonial Interventions, an interdisciplinary online journal and one of the co-editors of Plato’s Caves, an online platform that hosts an array of poetry, fiction and non-fiction.