YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=amrnYTjD8KU
Previous: Sara Eliza Johnson reads "Beekeeping"
Next: Leila Chatti reads "Snow Drops"

Categories

Statistics

View count:4,761
Likes:302
Comments:10
Duration:04:04
Uploaded:2020-03-25
Last sync:2024-10-18 23:45
Sumita Chakraborty reads her poem "Windows".

Sumita-
https://www.sumitachakraborty.com/
https://twitter.com/chakrabsumita

Brought to you by Complexly, The Poetry Foundation, and poet Paige Lewis. Learn more: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

11 issues of Poetry, subscribe today for $20: https://poetrymagazine.org/OursPoetica

Follow us elsewhere for the full Ours Poetica experience:
twitter.com/ourspoeticashow
instagram.com/ourspoeticashow
facebook.com/ourspoeticashow

#poetry #ourspoetica
My name is Sumita Chakraborty and I'm reading a poem called "Windows".  I wrote this poem after the death of my sister in 2014 and it's with little disconnected fragments of some translations of some of (?~0:14) French poetry.  

Windows

how much    loss
gains suddenly an emphasiss  
and    brilliant sadness



             far from that which lives and turns


languages 
of our vain comings and goings wilt and gnaw



        beat them,                              punish
them for having said and always said


tear out, finally,    our spells


          one life pours and grows impatient
for another life 


    and the lovers, look on them there,
    immobile and frail
    pinned like the butterflies
    for the beauty of their wings


      
               too great in the outdoors



like the lyre, you should be
rendered a constellation



like the scales or the lyre
an almost-name of the ages' absences



     should I defend myself
am I not intact



one who loves is never         beautiful



        tender-strained



all hazards are abolished
          at the middle of ove
with a little bit of space around it
where we are the masters



changeable like the sea



ice, sudden, where our face is mirrored
                                  traversed



taste of freedom compromised
by the presence of fate



                                             for whom would I wait



with this heart all full which loss completes



will I be found when the night abounds
given over to you, inexhaustible



climb!  turn far and away



                                                              doubt
that you can give the                  excess which arrests me
 


                                                             the sky, immense example
                         of depth and height



                                 make of the air a round arena



                                 
effort circumscribes
                 our life enormous
         


                 stretched toward the night

                                      what
  
                        escaped



                                  set     out in type on the page

                                           a little
 
                                  image

                          vague



          like the greyhounds
      
                                                 arranging their legs



the sense of our rites



waits



intent



                              who rushes, who tilts, who remains
after the abandonment of the night



                                  starry     avaricious




all the grand unbroken numbers
that the night will multiply




                                                           new celestial youth

  
                the matutinal sky



buckles       close



                under the guise of tenderness



                time    uses his jacket



inconsolable space



               turned me into wind, 

               placed me in the river



             leaves    fled...



                              I had drunk

             all of my abyss



             one must not tire
             and eat with one's eyes



                                     vision watered
             profusely a      garden of images




             each bird whose flight crosses
             my expanse




             nothing but looking sees like life to me



nothing but looking seems like life



while the prunes ripen
o my eyes, eaters of roses
you will drink the moon




                                 I consent
and I consent                         force




       o                                    force
does not frighten me anymore, because it cradles me




     in the morning, small wild
                         become almost a mouth
                       all     worn and bloodless




Be, stars, the rhymes
found at the ends of end




                          say  enough