Music for Summer Evening

In early summer, when

the immersive floating vastness of evening

engages Kolkata taking the city in slow stages

and delivers the first darkness

around wayside knots of trees —

when the cuckoo’s flickering calls

still frame the blended interim

between Kolkata’s semblance of fugitive spring

and the onset of summer like a freshet–

Plodding down Southern Avenue to where

the statue of Hemanta Mukherjee stands–

(my preferred pause, mooring and anchorage)

through the gathering dusk

that rides on the wings of noisy crows

arriving back home in the darkening trees before nightfall,

I seem to drift into an enchanted melodious sphere

of the six seasons entwined by songs.

The restive active matrix of rumbling traffic,

urban priorities and the fabled avenue

seems to recede into a state of time arrested suspended

while I, a decrepit restless wraith looking for my constituent, nutrient roots

across the tragic-comic wilderness of seventy years

sunk in the Tagore songs that Mukherjee sang into radiant being

(songs of spring and summer,

verdant baptismal preserver rain

and serene rich gold bright autumn lambent towards sunset),

seem to hear

earth-air-water-fire and the seasons commingling—

breathing forth once more a magnificent turbulence

chieftained by the silent liquid songs–

seem to hear that imperishable voice rising,

loading each word each note with renewing ore

in my deep heart’s core.

Kolkata

April-May 2022

Date: November 9, 2022