Ekram ALI

Ekram ALI Poems

1

The story of a flute
...

Ekram ALI Biography

Ekram Ali (born 1 July 1950) is a noted Indian Bengali poet and critic. Born in a small village named Teghoria (Dist. Birbhum, West Bengal) of a Bengali Muslim parentage. Before he came to Kolkata and took up journalism in a Bengali daily news paper- Aajkaal, Ekram was brought up in Birbhum.)

The Best Poem Of Ekram ALI

Dense Dark Light

1

The story of a flute

Down the rock layers, veins of trees, leaves
Its melody used to flow over in waves from inside the hills
A few tourists and pilgrims
Stood silent on the periphery of that melody

And away on the other side of the hills
A demon's flute always played behind his bag-of-bones cattle,
Blighted crop, pregnant demon wife





2

The hill comes down low here
And again rises high steep over there
With grass, earth, black rocks and woods

In the low depression in the middle
A thin and drizzling fountain flows- bearing in its stream
tiny freshwater fish
Young non-venomous snakes, small oysters, snails
And santhal's lazy shadow
Day and night, bearing in its stream
the ponderous shadows of the two hills









3

There is sloping land beneath the harvest
Its grass grows move copious day by day
As long as the grass lasts, numerous green colours
Sink to the bottom of the land
At the bottom of the land is lurking
Some ancient cobra from long ago

There is a crooked sky above the harvest
Its deception has further hardened the land
The hungry plough rushes to the call of the rich harvest
Venus remains stern







4

The Orion casts its light on the mortal tamarind tree
The light is small like a boozer's crooked look
But a myriad leaves shed thair light
On a fugitive family under the tree

Mortician butterflies plunge deeper in the wind
Looking for corpses, and
To the chrysalis come the leaf-covered flowers
Singing songs of thair petals gone rotten
In this cold-infeeted particle of light cast by the Orion







5

The storm first arrives rustling moaning
The heart of the devastated foliage lights up atop trees
Today it's a showdown between you and me
A caterpillar trembles
Cleaving to the last leaf of its life with pale green feet
Here the fountain
Falls to see the bottom of the roaring rocks

Clouds and lightning plunge
This wood path, splashed with the hues of the
devastated bridal bed,
Runs down to the deep forest
A snake slithers away to its sanctuary hole
A baby with a pair of hands, feet, eyes and a nose
Its scream feebly ballooning umbrella like
Soaring skyward
To the heartland of the storm






6


The light that filters through this low jungle
If but a stream of light particles
And the same light is a riot of colours out there in the sky

Leaves fall below- decay rot
Greenery becomes organic fertiliser
Time can be dectected moment by moment in each rotting vein of it
Shades tremble with every beat og the heart
Of the leaves which are even now intact, undimimished
In the shades, in the rotten leaves
Furious worms peck at their food

For away, gossamer silk light
conceals the contortions of the sun, stars and the moon






7

The light that filters through this low jungle
If but a stream of light particles
And the same light is a riot of colours out there in the sky

Leaves fall below- decay rot
Greenery becomes organic fertiliser
Time can be dectected moment by moment in each rotting vein of it
Shades tremble with every beat og the heart
Of the leaves which are even now intact, undimimished
In the shades, in the rotten leaves
Furious worms peck at their food

For away, gossamer silk light
conceals the contortions of the sun, stars and the moon





8

The lemon tree's story is new, because the tree is new

Even before the day ends, the frog croaks
The other insects call too
And this is how the first star appears in the lower sky

In the dark, the new lemon tree looks at the star
Amazed, increases the dark

One by one the other stars
Appear in the whole sky
And, bubbling over with joy the lemon tree
Hugs the hedges alongside, tilts, sways in the wind
And, further deepens the dark







9

All kinds of food are contorted
In the furious brightness of the dying afternoon
The furry squirrel
Goes and eats tamarind
Its contorted mouth chewing the food

Because, all mouths are contorted






10

Once more the rose-apple tree comes into bloom
Blossoms at first on the bare tree, then
The leaves gradually sprouting
Overlie the gale inside the blossom, its nightmare, green
Thus, blooms and leaves clash in a green-mangling-green war

The ants which to the shades of the dark black rose-apples
Flocked last year, are no more
The new ants have not yet
Tasted the juice, even so they patiently wait
The sky expands day by day
The void of the stars and their wait
Harden the blossoms
Buoy up the stone inside
In a rich increase of pulp grows the shape of that rose-apple
about to fall

Rose-apple grows ripe, falls- it is not known where
Below, the ants pick up the juicy fragrance of shades
Yet they cannot recognize
The wave of this strange unknown thing of the sky







11

Insects hovering around trees
Look to see if chillis are dangling
Or have, here and there, turned upward
Surprise! Surprise! Where will they tell this story?

Wheeling away from the crop of chillis
The insects climb towards that unfamiliar void
Where the kite watches the curved shape of the sky
And hopes that it will be able to return some day
Where the spinning earth watches the curved orbit
of the moon
And hopes that it will be able to catch up with it some day







12

Each branch of the tree is crooked
Varied pattern of foliage on its twigs sprigs
A myriad insects crawling all over
Remote dew drops come and fall, and all night
All the insects sing this song-
When will you flowers come when will you come into fruits

A swarm of gnats arrives bringing rumours
The birds sour towards more primeval winds
Winds are sometime Aswini sometime Kamini
Sailing on those winds remote dew drops fall
On the mother-green tree, yet all night
All the insects sing-
When will you flowers come when will you come into fruits

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