In search of words

Who says words are like butterflies?

I see invisible shackles.

The clerk behind his tired keyboard

fumbling and slipping,

still aspiring, cannot overcome

the daily repetitions of slavery.

Once a poet had begged the skylark

To share its purity!

But purgation is as unknown

as is love to the woman

who stands alone by the old cinema,

her glittery attire playing up

her cracked and ugly face.

Yet I never give up.

In raindrops suspended on the arum,

by chance growing by the clogged drain,

attempting to hold the sky,

in the melodies of Gita Dutt

so handy now, enslaved

to smart-phones and Time's murky desires,

I look for the perfect word

to expurgate. In truth,

I search for the formless form

to unlatch your door of silence.

I am still searching for the perfect word

to open your door of silence.

Sravani Biswas is Associate Professor of English at the University of Tezpur, Assam.