Three Poems by Zinia Mitra
- poemsindia
- Jun 10
- 3 min read
I think it is beautiful
However fast we think we walk
life is slow
chewing one day at a time.
It is one step after another in a slow-paced walk
through a meandering wilderness
filled with bird’s movements, their flappings and cooings.
I think it is beautiful—
how solitude drapes itself in the guise of time,
seeping through the crevices of yesterday’s forgotten rooms,
sliding like ancient roots through roofless dreams
and green doors people leave in our hearts when they go.
Waking is strange—
like surfacing from underwater visions
with night’s flowers still blooming their petals
inside the mind’s vase,
they leave sticky notes
in the language our dreams understand.
I think it is surreal—
for as we race home,
our yesterdays sit like spectral silhouettes
on park benches of shifting shadows, swinging their legs
wearing costumes of our lost echoes and forgotten masks.
I think it is unsettling—
that we find more comfort in the spectral remnant
of what once was—
our old sorrows, our old loves,
each a flickering ghost on our rain-soaked avenue.
We feign haste,
stepping past these remnants of time--
embracing our loneliness
we only pretend to walk fast, past them.
Footbridges
Footbridges arch over the city
like sleeping serpents of thought,
their spines bending under the weight
of invisible footsteps
forgotten philosophies.
Why do I come to words
to net my fleeting truths?
Words, like candles under glass jars
flicker briefly.
Every word—a warmth of a quilt
where I am born again in fragments,
every word a coldness of silhouettes where I die .
Events spiral open like long tongue of smoke
endings dress up like beginnings shake hands.
Does being a street artist
point to something other than what he is?
His body a question mark
dragging a rope like a long-tailed comet --
why does he whip himself
with that thick, myth-dipped rope?
Does he believe in the myths he retells
the sagas of personal sins and absolutions?
He holds on to his art
like the old footbridges hold the city
archiving its myths
walkways
whisper them to pedestrians
who climb up the steps
walk across their length to descend
into the other side - another reality—
there buildings unfold backwards,
and nothing means what meant before.
At times the city
Sometimes from the bus window
the city flickers like a hologram in sepia,
where baul songs float
like dust motes in the dying light.
Stones dressed as gods
blink sluggishly under banyan trees,
and red threads tie the air
into pulsing knots of prayers.
Sometimes I become a boat,
folding my hair into a paper sail.
I untie every thread
and watch them unravel into sky-water,
each one a human whisper,
a secret the sea learns to trill.
Shadows of trees grow legs
and cross the roads with diligence,
sometimes they nod at me,
as if I too were made of leaves.
About the Poet:
Zinia Mitra is a Professor in the Department of English at North Bengal University, India, and was the Mother Teresa Chair Professor for Peace at St. Xavier's University, Kolkata. She served as the first Head of the Department of Women's Studies and Director of the Centre for Women's Studies at North Bengal University. She has authored several articles and books, including: Indian Poetry in English: Critical Essays, Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Imagery and Experiential Identity, The Concept of Motherhood in India: Myths, Theories and Realities, Fourth Wave Feminism, Social Media, and (Sl)Activism.
She has served as a co-editor for Twentieth-Century British Literature: Reconstructing Literary Sensibility, Interact, and Interact FYUG. Her poetry volumes include Some Words Never Sleep (Indie Blu(e) Pennsylvania) and Fern Tunes (Hornbill, Kolkata). She has translated works for various journals and textbooks, including Sukumar Ray's "Jatiner Juto" for the ICSE textbook A Magic Place. She has worked on projects with UNICEF and the Australian Association of Writing Programs, and serves on editorial boards of academic and poetry journals.
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