“Sonnet Mondal’s An Afternoon in My Mind is a young man’s meditation on time, filled with the recognition that it is too late to return to childhood. It is both personal and political; concerned with questions of the spirit and of matter. The plain-spoken tone of these poems is a cover for their deeper metaphysical inquiries.” —Catharine Barnett
Sonnet Mondal
Three Poems from An Afternoon in My Mind, by Sonnet Mondal
Rubble
The books no longer smell of paper
paper no longer smells of education
education loiters like withered leaves
and the leaves fall like tears on flames.
The rubble looks like a failed mutiny.
By the tables, chairs and books.
They seem like the skeletons of a sketchy mankind
clattering in a slapdash rhythm.
I already feel my bones beating the drums—
I don’t recognize the beat they belong to.
The poison is propagating its own agendas.
The ears are being sent into a trance.
Let me go now.
If the rubble ever shapes up into a school again
000000000000000000000and not a museum
call me back to this land.
The Biscuit Factory
The biscuit factory
still bears a baked aroma
on its unwrapped metal.
The leftovers are soil now
but it failed to engulf its breath.
The blurred slogans on its walls
are old bruises—still longing to heal.
It feeds on time to shed its color
for the bricks to appear—
the way a tree longs to shed its leaves
without our staring.
Souvenirs
Sometimes
we pick broken shells
from knee-deep sea waters
and decorate our showcases with them.
Sometimes
we give them as souvenirs to friends.
Sometimes
they are more exquisite
than digital photographs.
Sometimes
dead parts are worth more
than the living.
When poetry translates the agony of loss, no matter how deep the words or how eloquent, they become futile, falling on the indifferent, deaf ears of a world marred in violence, lack of compassion, and bereft of its very essence-Humanity that is! This doesn’t mean that the poet concerned should ( I am, we all should be!) let his pen down and give up. If anything, poetry or any other intellectual endeavor to attempt (even as a last resort) to free the Human World from itself, is and will always be of paramount significance, if the species is to survive at all, on this beautiful and deeply troubled Planet! Thank you Markaz!