THE TABLE IN A RESTAURANT - Poem by Bhaskar Roy Barman

Bhaskar Roy Barman

The moment I close my eyes

in meditation on the unfathomable

I visualize golden fleeces of cloud

perambulating the skies

and old faces peering down through the fleeces,

their faces writhed into a semblance of smile.

With them I used to sit at a table in a restaurant

by the window overlooking a garden.

The smells of the garden-flowers

Would spatter against the window-pane.

They left me closeted with the ever-changing world.

I feel , whenever I sit at the table, their hanging around the table.

I glory in living in the ever-fresh changeability

of the ever-changing world.

They have stuck at the last words

they had uttered at the table

and at the last glance they had thrown

through the window around the garden.

I can have trees felled. if I like to I often do,

for it fetches me a good amount of money I can,

if asked to, stand on a dais to deliver a mellifluous speech

on the necessity of afforestation.

I can attire myself in ultra-modern habiliments

when I go out with my wife to have people think

we are but a happy couple,

and to get ourselves photographed to remind ourselves

we married each other one day.

But they remain clothed in the garments

they had worn at the table.

In meditation I visualize them mocking me,

for I have shut my eyes to the truth of life..