Honking taxis, buses, blue-white buildings reshaping
the city’s flesh and bones, scattered anecdotes,
a murder on the serpentine lane, wagging tongues,
desiccated trams, stained walls, imperial nostalgias,
twilight extrudes the spectral accumulations,
time never progresses here in this dying city
strobic eyeballs of the passerby, not cruising,
the crowd speaking in half- knowledge, are caught
up in the eddies of chaos,
An anemic crow on the branchless tree sharpens
his eyes; untangle the reflection upside down,
The slum boys play football on the roadside park.
A memory dormant, a dirty dark alley draws an ambigram.
A clock-tower shines in the first light of the morning sun.
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Gopal Lahiri
@ gopallahiri
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Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 33 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose are published across more than one hundred journals and anthologies globally His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 19 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021 and Best of the Nets for poetry in 2025. His ‘Selected Poems’ was published by Classix, New Delhi. His recent book ‘Wasp and Filament ‘ was published by Hogg Press, Madison, US.
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