The Poetry Of Ritwik
            Banerjee


            
 


            
 

            
I Write Stories

            
Even now I write stories.

            I weave them out of the mirages

            of distant satiations.

            In the dim corners of twilight

            I string together a few ephemeral

            shrubs and palm leaves.

            And, when the vanishing pool

            quenches my pulsating thirst,

            when the rubbles of the trees

            sway in my heart with derisive laughs,

            I turn the hourglass over,

            bury an oasis that never was

            in the coarseness of sands;

            with rejoice in feet I seek

            new waters, new grass, and glimpses

            of evergreen leaves.

            
My hopes have aged by now.

            Their faces all wear wrinkles of wisdom.

            Neglect and haggard futility have

            callused their beautiful hands

            and blunted their slender fingers.

            But, time and again,

            the desert breeze brings the faint aroma

            of deep blue waters

            silent and shimmering under horizons' veil,

            and my searching tongue, like a newborn child,

            thrashes around, helpless,

            for that water cold and sweet.

            
In every such rebirth, even now

            I write my stories.

            

            


            Ritwik was born in Kolkata
            (Calcutta), India and then migrated to New Delhi along with his
            family at the age of two. His undergraduate education has been
            in mathematical sciences, following which he pursued a graduation
            in computer science. He has been writing casually from a young
            age, and is known to a closed circle of a few hundred people
            as the author of four short stories and several poems. His works
            also includes a novella in Bengali and poems of the Buddhist
            'Jataka' stories, also in Bengali.