Birthday

Birthday

That night was different.

The snow fell in silence and the road to the Notre dame was white and icy

The gong of the twelve stuck at that moment when a night bird flew from the shelter of the old crevices

I sat there on the bench with the candles burning

I had nothing to pray then

Nothing to say

But my lips moved

Yet another dream     

To hold the clock before it ran away

Across the moon

I laughed out and wished myself

Happy Birthday!       

I spent the night there sleepless and with a lilt of a smile on lips

I walked towards the river through the empty road

Some spring leaf fell from heaven

Dry, fragrant with the first splash of green

I was a complete stranger, lost

I was almost floating in the vacuum of a poetic city

Where beauty has settled forever

After every wish, this was my only wish

To sit beside the Seine and whisper.

But what to whisper?

From a broken house or from a pierced feet or those insomniac eyes

Or those women who's faces changed in bed

Leaving me with some scars and laughter

That danced in the air before

I laughed out

The journeys which were never made I still think of them

Mapping them in the dust on the body of a night leaf

Which has just kissed dew

The faces which vanished in twinkle but remained somewhere

Mostly in dreams at dark which shivered me

With the ecstasy of being alive.

With the night I grew younger

The more I laughed

In the streets, I see my childhood playing

A boy running to catch the last train of the night

I can see the death of my father and the world changing color

I can see those nights of Holi in which I first touched a woman

And that brought the youth which came with an empty white page never to be filled up

I walked I ran I paused I again ran

From village to city and then across the seas

Uttering in sunburnt lips, to live

Just live

Any way live

So that I can write

My words

My every heartfelt sweat soaked blood rushed words

Between a thousand pains

Broken windows

Half open doors

Slant corridors

Forgotten fragrance

Desolate rooms

Bleeding feet

I stand unclothed

Naked

Time crossing me

Before I crossed another hour of existence

It started raining and I drenched again

Strolled through the road

To find another piece

Of summer warmth.  

Subhadip Majumdar

Subhadip Majumdar is a writer poet from India. He is certified in Creative Writing from University of Iowa.He also edited for a long time a reputed Bengali poetry journal. Wrote a short novel as Tumbleweed writer in Shakespeare and Company, Paris.Two poetry books published and one novel in process of publication. Books published on Van Gogh from New York and a Short  Collection of Stories available in Amazon