Here’s a jugalbandi in two poems by Ritamvara (as daughter) and Ipsita (as mother). They have been composing poems in sync with each other. Here are two poems by two gifted poets, a Mother’s Day special of Different Truths.
I am curled
All alone
In the base of my grief as dunes.
The quilt is winter
Covering the dusk.
The sky falls indigo
On the rugs of my full lips.
Sleep is a shadow on the wall
I light a flicker of my grief
And there is sleep
burning my papery skin.
All alone
In this wide expanse
I float like an unconscious wave in the fickle sea.
You were never there,
To smooth the tide,
To kiss me back to the island of life,
To hold me in the universal tandav between death and life.
Never were you there
Before I die
This is your Jasmine
Praying like a little girl
With clasped hands
And with a mute language of shaken meteors
Father –
Let me pent up
As a soft bubble
In my ma’s happy screams of life.
Ma tonight a wind ruffles our green lawn
You smell of the white peace
And I
Wipe my divided vein
With the cotton of your smile.
©Ritamvara Bhattacharya.
Note: Ritamvara Bhattacharya and Ipsita Ganguli first met on Facebook and were soon bonded in a poetic “mother-daughter” fondness. They regularly write spin offs on each other’s pieces
Here is one such composition, Peace I &II.
The former is written from the child’s mind craving peace from her mother, a solace for her torments.
The latter is from the mind of a mother, who knows that even though she wants to protect her child from life, there will be ups and downs. Yet she is determined to bring up her child to peace!
Pix from Net.