from
LETTERS OF GLASS
poems by
SUDEEP SEN
SUDEEP SEN
Copyright ©Sudeep Sen
FLYING HOME
I meticulously stitch time through the embroidered sky,
through its unpredictable lumps and hollows. I
am going home once again from another
home, escaping the weave of reality into another
one, one that gently reminds and stalls
to confirm: my body is the step-son of my soul.
But what talk of soul and skin
in this day and age, such ephemeral things
that cross-weaves blood and breath
into clotted zones of true escape.
What talk of flight time and flying
when real flights of fancy are crying
to stay buoyant unpredictably in mid-air
amid pain, peace, and belief: just like thin air
sketches, where another home is built
in free space vacuum, as another patchwork quilt
is quietly wrapped around, gently, in memoriam.
from Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins) &
Language of a New Century (New York: W.W.Norton)
WINTER
Couched on crimson cushions,
pink bleeds gold
and red spills into one’s heart.
Broad leather keeps time,
calibrating different hours
in different zones
unaware of the grammar
that makes sense.
Only random woofs and snores
of two distant dogs
on a very cold night
clears fog that is unresolved.
New plants wait for new heat —
to grow, to mature.
An old cane recliner contains
poetry for peace — woven
text keeping comfort in place.
But it is the impatience of want
that keeps equations unsolved.
Heavy, translucent, vaporous,
split red by mother tongues —
winter’s breath is pink.
from Winter (London: Frances Kiernan Studio), The Literary Review (USA) & Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi)
MATRIX
for PSC
Birds fly across the pale blue sky
cross-stitching a matrix in Pali —
a tongue now beautifully classical
like temple-toned Bharatanatyam.
Dialogues in the other garden
happen not just in springtime. Yet
you stare askance talking poetry
in silence, an angularity of stance
like a shot in a film-noir narrative
yet to be edited to form a whole.
What is a whole? Is it not a sum
of distilled parts, parts one chooses
to expose carefully like raw stock —
controlling patterns in the red light
of dark, a dark that eventually exposes.
There emerges at the end,
nests for imaginative flights to rest,
to weave our own stories braving
winds, currents, and the elements
of disguise. Fireflies in the grove
do not belong to numbered generation —
they only light up because line-breaks
like varnam keep purity alive —
enigmatic, disciplined, spontaneous.
Let the birds fly tracing angular paths,
let the dancer dance unbridled,
let the poet write unrestrained —
natural as breathing itself.
Matrix woven can be unwoven —
enjambments like invisible pauses
weave us back into algebraic patterns
that only heart and imagination can.
She walks porcupines — as you do — and
listens to the sound of the sea in a conch.
from The Literary Review (USA), New Quest (Pune) & Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi)
SUDEEP SEN [www.sudeepsen.net] read English Literature at the University of Delhi & as an Inlaks Scholar received an MS from the Journalism School at Columbia University (New York). His awards, fellowships & residencies include: Hawthornden Fellowship (UK), Pushcart Prize nomination (USA), BreadLoaf (USA), Pleiades (Macedonia), NLPVF Dutch Foundation for Literature (Amsterdam), Ledig House (New York), and Sanskriti (New Delhi). He was international writer-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) & visiting scholar at Harvard University. Sen’s dozen books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), and Blue Nude: Poems & Translations 1977-2012 (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Award) is forthcoming. He has also edited several important anthologies, including: The HarperCollins Book of Modern English Poetry by Indians (forthcoming Sept 2010), The Literary Review Indian Poetry, Midnight’s Grandchildren: Post-Independence English Poetry from India, and others. His poems, translated into over twenty-five languages, have featured in international anthologies by Penguin, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury, Routledge, Norton, Knopf, Everyman, Random House, Macmillan, and Granta. His poetry and literary prose have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Financial Times, London Magazine, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Telegraph, Hindu, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, CNN-IBN, NDTV & AIR. Sen’s recent work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta) & Language for a New Century (Norton). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and editor of Atlas [www.atlasaarkarts.net]. Email: sudeepsen.net@gmail.com
LETTERS OF GLASS
poems by
SUDEEP SEN
SUDEEP SEN
Copyright ©Sudeep Sen
FLYING HOME
I meticulously stitch time through the embroidered sky,
through its unpredictable lumps and hollows. I
am going home once again from another
home, escaping the weave of reality into another
one, one that gently reminds and stalls
to confirm: my body is the step-son of my soul.
But what talk of soul and skin
in this day and age, such ephemeral things
that cross-weaves blood and breath
into clotted zones of true escape.
What talk of flight time and flying
when real flights of fancy are crying
to stay buoyant unpredictably in mid-air
amid pain, peace, and belief: just like thin air
sketches, where another home is built
in free space vacuum, as another patchwork quilt
is quietly wrapped around, gently, in memoriam.
from Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins) &
Language of a New Century (New York: W.W.Norton)
WINTER
Couched on crimson cushions,
pink bleeds gold
and red spills into one’s heart.
Broad leather keeps time,
calibrating different hours
in different zones
unaware of the grammar
that makes sense.
Only random woofs and snores
of two distant dogs
on a very cold night
clears fog that is unresolved.
New plants wait for new heat —
to grow, to mature.
An old cane recliner contains
poetry for peace — woven
text keeping comfort in place.
But it is the impatience of want
that keeps equations unsolved.
Heavy, translucent, vaporous,
split red by mother tongues —
winter’s breath is pink.
from Winter (London: Frances Kiernan Studio), The Literary Review (USA) & Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi)
MATRIX
for PSC
Birds fly across the pale blue sky
cross-stitching a matrix in Pali —
a tongue now beautifully classical
like temple-toned Bharatanatyam.
Dialogues in the other garden
happen not just in springtime. Yet
you stare askance talking poetry
in silence, an angularity of stance
like a shot in a film-noir narrative
yet to be edited to form a whole.
What is a whole? Is it not a sum
of distilled parts, parts one chooses
to expose carefully like raw stock —
controlling patterns in the red light
of dark, a dark that eventually exposes.
There emerges at the end,
nests for imaginative flights to rest,
to weave our own stories braving
winds, currents, and the elements
of disguise. Fireflies in the grove
do not belong to numbered generation —
they only light up because line-breaks
like varnam keep purity alive —
enigmatic, disciplined, spontaneous.
Let the birds fly tracing angular paths,
let the dancer dance unbridled,
let the poet write unrestrained —
natural as breathing itself.
Matrix woven can be unwoven —
enjambments like invisible pauses
weave us back into algebraic patterns
that only heart and imagination can.
She walks porcupines — as you do — and
listens to the sound of the sea in a conch.
from The Literary Review (USA), New Quest (Pune) & Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi)
SUDEEP SEN [www.sudeepsen.net] read English Literature at the University of Delhi & as an Inlaks Scholar received an MS from the Journalism School at Columbia University (New York). His awards, fellowships & residencies include: Hawthornden Fellowship (UK), Pushcart Prize nomination (USA), BreadLoaf (USA), Pleiades (Macedonia), NLPVF Dutch Foundation for Literature (Amsterdam), Ledig House (New York), and Sanskriti (New Delhi). He was international writer-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) & visiting scholar at Harvard University. Sen’s dozen books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), and Blue Nude: Poems & Translations 1977-2012 (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Award) is forthcoming. He has also edited several important anthologies, including: The HarperCollins Book of Modern English Poetry by Indians (forthcoming Sept 2010), The Literary Review Indian Poetry, Midnight’s Grandchildren: Post-Independence English Poetry from India, and others. His poems, translated into over twenty-five languages, have featured in international anthologies by Penguin, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury, Routledge, Norton, Knopf, Everyman, Random House, Macmillan, and Granta. His poetry and literary prose have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Financial Times, London Magazine, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Telegraph, Hindu, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, CNN-IBN, NDTV & AIR. Sen’s recent work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta) & Language for a New Century (Norton). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and editor of Atlas [www.atlasaarkarts.net]. Email: sudeepsen.net@gmail.com
