Amlanjyoti Goswami
​​​Winter 2017

*

India Gate

Ponds spring overnight
Slick mud of our palms,
Our lilies spreading wing

Inside, we
Find
Lines to walk,
The music listening.

All in circles, a perfect
Symmetry at India Gate,

This village mud,
The pond by the planting, perhaps
From Ramkinkar’s haunts.

Dilli wallahs, here we come
Jingling!
The city is being taken over, again!
This time,
By the aesthetes, the artists, the slippery
Muddy                  Waters.

*

Nilgai

Watching from the bushes…
I make way.
Leap, dash
into the undergrowth.
Through solitary leaves, I peek
A glimpse
of skin, brown blending
Green.
Hear rustling

Our eyes meet.
We gaze in the
Perfect silence
of the universe
Where nothing happens.

Just an old year gently turning.
A new year hums
Briskly on.

*

Witness

We         fled, fast as legs could carry. Word grew of the mob coming. Then remembered, grandma
left behind.

We      turned back, carried her out to a safe backyard verandah. She lay curled on a round cane
chair, a soft ball.

We       took positions, the two of us, behind the walls.  Behind those houses, where we used to
pluck fresh, juicy guavas.

We      covered each other, each step a whisper in the dust.   We would take them one at a time.

We     flashed our knives in brisk lightning strokes, silent, straight at the throat.  We waited, forever, 
​measuring each breath in moments,

​We       knew what was coming. To run would be to leave grandma behind.

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Amlanjyoti Goswami’s poems have appeared in publications in India, as well as UK,
Africa and USA. A bunch of his poems find place in ‘40 under 40: an anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry’, published recently by the Bombay-based poetry press, Poetrywala. He grew up in Guwahati, Assam and lives in Delhi.