Poetry 2011 Second Prize, Purnendu Chatterjee

My Easy Chair

I stretch my back on the easy chair
Of earth, sprawling wherever I will,
A water bead on a lotus petal
That would fall when it is meet to fall
Into the cup of infinity.

The wisdom of watching the blue sky
Turn into a blue bird, skimming
The bare, billowing breast of the bluer ocean
Is mine; while men, feverish, foolish
And gray, a nameless shadow, stalk by me.

The pomp of pelf, the glory of power,
Withered leaves in the vortex of a cyclone,
a bubble on the ocean of time,
Make shadows rue and pine, while I sleep
Serene on my easy chair.

Worrying is giving, and I have nothing to give.
I take everything from the feast of being,  
Both the petals and the thorns.
The linnets lull me to sleep,
The sparrows wake me to life.

My Maker is merry with me,
For I can see the weeping
Of the moon, crystal drops on a liquid sky,
And the laughter of the lightening,
Water-snakes darting across a watery heaven.

I push neither button nor syringe,
Raise no hecatomb of smoke, create
No image of life-in-death, as
The shadows do. I lie, content and
Tranquil, on my easy chair.