Prologue

That’s what you see—
the golden bridge of the dawning sun.

Have you seen the golden shower?
Butterflies—
colour breaking loose,
held for a moment in warmth.

Exactly there
our old home:
unrepaired.

At dawn
they step down from the phaeton:
Ven Ghagh, Ramkinkar, Jibanananda,
Neelmani, Parbati Baul—
sometimes Marx, sometimes Lenin,
unannounced.

Life draws breath.

Recital unfolds
on the Gorilla fight—
voices gather;
the song hesitates—
bare, waiting.

Safdar collapses,
breath spent.
Hemanta Kumar storms off in a huff.
The song is left open,
unfinished.
A line of the poem
slips into your eyes—

whether you are there or not,
whether you know it or not.
I look for myself,
tearing everything apart —
paintbrushes,
bare canvases,
songs,
and the songs left unfinished.

I hide
in the unwavering yellow—
unknowing.

Friend, come one day.
No song.
No words.
Silence—
and in its long pull,
eye to eye,
we will search each other.

Exactly there—
our old home,
unrestored.

__________________
08/01/2025, Tezpur

Editor’s Note

Prologue is a reflection on memory and self-exploration. Through the repeated image of the old house, the poem binds personal memory to artistic inheritance and moral inquiry, suggesting that history is not something preserved intact but something continually activated in the present. The appearance of artists, thinkers, and revolutionaries signals moments of creation, vision, and dissent.

Art, in this poem, is never complete; it remains collective, unfinished, and shaped by tension, conflict, and estrangement. The address to “you” foregrounds self-contradiction, marking the inner struggle that accompanies the search for the self. Moving through these fractured passages of doubt and contradiction, the poem gestures toward a moment beyond language or performance. This moment is neither despair nor nostalgia; rather, it carries the resonance of spiritual realisation.

Stylistically, the poem unfolds through lyrical intensity and fragmented imagery. Its quiet composure and resistance to closure do not weaken its movement; instead, they sustain the poem’s fluid, open-ended rhythm.

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