The Trident and the Tea Seller

By Sonnet Mondal

The trident lightning arrestor

looks more constant than before—

besieged by discomfort,

bygone joys and pain—a belief

flowing endlessly into the future.

The creepers cannot

offer love to it—no red or yellow flowers.

The tea seller beside the closed factory

never noticed it since the trident

didn’t ever arrest or spear any lightning

especially when the radical flags

were offering a yearlong monsoon

to a sneaking, venomous rust.

There is now a vacuum inside the gates,

patches of love and strife on the trident

and outside some tea for passers-by.

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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.