The Escape Artist

The early night is a primitive friend, an aborigine
of the last millennium
Its body smells of inheritance and tired dew
I am always a fugitive

We sit together near the palace quietly
We have swallowed food mixed
with our own deception
The kings, presidents and ministers teach us

the calendar of unforgettable events
The rivers flow with our misconstruction
It’s our drink
I yearn to learn more about the manual

of the escape artist
Have we not seen resistance and peace
from the secret window in our attic ?
We deconstruct happiness (a yellow building with

large windows) and justice (an opera house)
brick by brick and stand guard again at the palace
before we are hand-picked
yet again for some other offence

Sekhar Banerjee is a bilingual poet. He has three collections of poems and a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. His poems in English have been published in some of the major literary journals in India and abroad . Lately, he has been selected as the Author of the Month by Setu - a bilingual monthly journal published from Pittsburgh , USA. Read other articles by Sekhar.