Sonnet Hues Profaned | Kushal Poddar

Sonnet to the White

One, two, three leaves sink in the sun.
The bituminous pitch turns liquid.
The path undone runs towards the school 
I hear the Miss Teacher translating
English to Northern East, to the city
seeking a leeway in the narrow shadow
beneath the parking cars and licking
its rear before stretching and curling up. 

Quite feverish, I feel time peddle heat
through the veins, hear the children
croon in the manner they are tutored.
"This is the summer of everything."
I remember you used to say in the end.
I hold onto my shivering blurred to bleach.

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Hues We See Not

We did not name these colours.
They exist between the shades 
When my uncle don madness
he can scoop those in his fist
and cast on the face of this race of the names. 

"We are not blind enough to see." 
He says. Whatever it may mean. 
I have to drag him inside. Sometimes
people are so hostile!
And my skin feels the sheen and grain.
I see no granules of hues. I rub my hands
again and again.

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The Profaned Coparceners

I tell my cousin brother profaning,
"Defile anything; not a gentleman,
I am a poet. I can call my mother a whore
and still give her respect.”

This spring morning sky bursts into crows.
Their flight pattern looks like spokes
from a shouting mouth. 
I shake my head and head out for
the downstairs where I live.
He has the upstairs. It is landing of the stairs
where a big window makes us silhouette.

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The Constant

Two men at work talks about iron
with gust and credulity unknown
to me. Last night's rain rusts away.

The flowers of summer leave a trail 
to the stream, to the West of the city. 
The residue of the clouds pass by
the delta of the labour hard hands.

The river gurgles, "There is a tectonic
shift nearby.”
Yet we build. Iron. Hands. Sun. Sweat beads.

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©2023 Kushal Poddar
All rights reserved

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The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins

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