An enigmatic poem, with layers of life’ sensibilities, by Prof Sonjoy, exclusively for Different Truths.
You wonder what it is about a house, a home
That lures the wayfarer to stop on his tracks
Drift into its sofa’s padding and foam
Rest tired boots up on the ledge of the sill
Warms one’s palms over a steaming cup till
Relaxed, one falls into a deep deep sleep?
Was it the window that beckoned and led
Opening its arms to a welcoming bed
Silken laced curtains flapping in the breeze?
Or was it the latticed and carved doorways
Into enticing passages
With golden skylight ways
Laced beds corsetted in eiderdown
A quaint attic up spiralling stairways
Mahogany caskets, carved oak chests
Enveloped with letters, calligraphed tales
Of haunted loves
The quests and conquests?
How long can the aura and enigma last
To keep the wayfarer loyal and steadfast
With boots shoe-racked
Spur and saddle stabled
In the closet closed,
Neatly stacked?
Before the restless unquiet spirit
Tamed and spent
Starts knocking its head from wall to wall
Centrifugled from inertia in a wild tangent
To the open road,
Saddled, stirruped, upholstered and all…
The house closes its doors, the windows bang shut
The walls fold up, like a used pack of cards.
The landed gentry has returned
Carved stick, pipe and a Cuban cigar,
Thick moustache highlighting
A well-chiselled face
The house welcomes its patriarch
In a matriarchal embrace
Wayfarer, drifter, transgresser trespasser
Heavy-hearted, nimble-footed
Unceremoniously departs,
In the nick of time
By the skin of his neck
Breaks free to unhindered roam
In green pastures
Valleys, meadows, hilltops and peaks
To dance a last and final tango
Before the senses go slow and dull
The breath shortens to a vacant lull.
Sunset beckons in the horizon
Wayfarer, drifter drifting,
Twilight zoned
Sun’s shadow thickening, shifting
In inky darkness embalmed
Enthroned.
In God’s House,
Finally honed.
Photo from the Internet
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A beautiful piece of art which depicts the nostalgia of the poet who wanders with the memory of lost home. It’s a soulful tribute to the ones who became homeless in Amphan.
Majestic and beautiful ❤
Did the transgressor really transgress, or was it the great house’s way of expelling unwanted memories of its own suppressed transgressions?
Thank you Reena Amina and Shruti for your responses. Shruti…that is extremely perceptive..
The transgression is only too real and the poem explores the energy created out of the Blakean contrary between the desire for a settled secure and stable life at the personal and professional leve; and the adventurous desire for the unknown, the perilous and forbidden…….
Thank you, Sir, for that highly illuminating explanation. It reminds one strongly of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, except that this has an even more universal feel, with the trespasser unnamed and un-identified.
Your responses and communication with you makes poetry worthwhile…..Thank you Neha….thank you Shruti….Neha….you are right Yeats has been a major favourite ….and does enter surreptitiously here there and everywhere…..
Quite a hair-raising experience to read this!
And here, the influence if Yeats seems to be paramount- the interrogatives that constantly make the reader aware of the dilemmas, paradoxes are resonant of Yeats’s interrogatives in Leda and the Swan, No Second Troy et al 🙂
Do keep writing!