Sitting on the tapered branches, a night bird, sleepy-eyed.
The river below holds a boat that didn’t know how to move.
It flaps and whistles, reclaiming identity in a fit of rage.
The moon is a wet paper lantern, about to dissolve in the tide.
And every oar-stroke I took this year returns as a bruise.
Sitting on the tapered branches, a night bird, sleepy-eyed.
I thought I was the ferryman. I thought I was the guide.
But the water was ferrying me, persistent in its use
It flaps and whistles, reclaiming identity in a fit of rage.
In its dream, the bird is huge, the wings are wide,
I am small enough to fit inside its beak’s dark groove
Sitting on the tapered branches, a night bird, sleepy-eyed.
What is identity, if not what remains after we have tried?
A feather, a whistle, a stubbornness we cannot evade.
It flaps and whistles, reclaiming identity in a fit of rage.
So let us both stay up — the boat, the bird, the night akin.
You watch from above, I drift below, both stay silent.
Sitting on the tapered branches, a night bird, sleepy-eyed,
It flaps and whistles, reclaiming identity in a fit of rage.
@gopallahiri
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Gopal Lahiri
Picture Nick Victor
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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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