My Mother's Village

By Sonnet Mondal

If you visit my mother’s village

there is nothing much to see.

There is a banyan older than my

great-grandfather’s thoughts,

a few houses older than a few cities,

a temple older than my mother

and boundless rice fields larger than

the dreams of the farmers there.

There is nothing much to see

for me either. I feel I have grown

older than my maternal house.

Still if you wish to visit it

get to some rooftop on a rainy day,

listen to the rain whispering to leaves

and see how a village swings

between two jungles.

There is nothing much in it—

just that triviality seems dearer to life here—

a feather swayed by the wind.

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Sonnet Mondal writes from Kolkata and is the director of Chair Poetry Evenings – Kolkata’s International Poetry Festival. His ten books of poetry include Clamour for a Handful of Rice (Copper Coin), An Afternoon in My Mind (Copper Coin), and Lautati Dopaharein (Rajkamal Prakashan). He has read as an invited poet at literary festivals in more than thirty countries, and his works have been translated into over twenty languages. His recent works have appeared in The Harper’s Bazaar, Virginia Quarterly, Stand magazine, Versopolis, and The Markaz Review. His honours include an Award of Honour from the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi and the Gayatri Gamarsh Memorial Award. He was a part of the Silk Routes Project, IWP IOWA, and a guest writer in residence at the Almaty Writing Residency. He is the managing editor of Verseville, editor of the Indian section of Lyrikline, and has served as a guest editor for Words Without Borders.