Shantanu Sharma

Date of Publish: 2026-11-07

A few poems by Shantanu Sharma

 

A Prayer for You

 

I pray for you at night,

in darkness and in light,

I muse on my childhood

I drink your love

and tell the wind in secret

about the burning ache of my heart

At night

I bring you poetry—

the sharpened words, scorched in ache and joy

At night

The fetus of my dreams

grows in your womb

I breathe your dawn

at the end of the night

A pilgrim I become to your shrine of peace

at the end of the night

At night I go to you

Breaking through the darkness;

tearing through the mist.

 

Disappearance

 

One day I will slip away unnoticed

into the darkness of self-exile

And

I will burn my poems

Severing all the intimate bonds

(bonds those have strained by now)

I will roam like a free man

Like a long whistle of a train

life will fall asleep at a junction unknown

No haste of desires left

The embers of poetry

will set me ablaze

 

Poem

 

The Southern path leads only to darkness

Endless doubt to the North

West is a vertical division of rootless souls

To the East is mere expansive light

Hold my hands brother

Let us seek sunlight

Blind simultaneous vision

This is no time for

Rabindranath's southern breeze

 

A Poem for Class Interest

 

Had I blossomed as they demanded

Had I flourished as they demanded

I would not have been unemployed

My birthday would not have become death anniversary

Had I acted according to them...

Or it could have been like this too—

I obeyed their orders obediently—

I blossomed and flourished,

branched out and got settled

Celebrated birth anniversaries

Twenty days, twenty months, twenty years...

For the rulers, the astronomical position of the stars never remains the same

In fact we people are not right oftentimes

Should we bloom just because they demand so!

Should we float away or drift

Should we celebrate birthdays or mourn deaths

just because they demand so!

We must think, we must be able to think...

We too have our days— our time

Class consciousness makes us aware of it

It's been a long time since we learned,

But it has not yet fallen night

 

Prophetic

 

One day our poems will tell

That here there were more people alive than the dead

Flowers bloomed, birds in flight

Life was full of music and song

There were men, there were great men

There were men, there were great men

There were women, there were noble women

There was speech, there was philosophy Charvaka

There was the people, there was collective mind

There was continuous conversation on country, culture, civilization

One day our poems will tell

How the tree of eternal consciousness was uprooted

There was crisis in civilization— crisis in the human soul

The horizon of creation had blackened out while rushing to build God's abode,

With the help of job ads a new king came to power

In the great deluge of ambrosial sermons by him and his council;

In an attempt to become the Vishwaguru,

the state turned bankrupt

The country had become an empty, dry conch shell

Who has stolen the most precious ornaments

Who has plucked the flowers

Who has broken the birds' wings

Who has auctioned King Janaka's plough

Who has cultivated the land

that was tilled by the non-Aryans

towards the end of the Krishna civilization

One day our poetry will reveal everything

It will reveal that, people never had accepted a body of stone, rejecting the melody of the soul.

 

Words of a Heretic Poet of the Nineties

 

I should have written to you

many things, I should have written

I should have told you

many things, I should have told you

before the cruel winter passed by playing the flute

Melodies of my heart do not come up to my lips

Those I should have sung, drenched in dewy silence

In cozy nights,there should have been a flute tune playing a blue note,

holding a lamb close to the chest

Yet I have not sung, never have I waded in the dewy silence

I, the atheist poet of the nineties,

who am inspired by the warmth of the Seventies,

a restless soldier chasing the magical vision of a free state

Having passed so many days in exile—

Mao's cavalryman in eyes, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh in hands

Searching for the golden paddy kernel in a material world ,

I play the auspicious veena

I should have written to you

many things, I should have written

before the cruel winter passed by playing the flute

Before the fall of the devastated days

of my homeland, under winter's weight

I should have written to you...

 

Kalakavya / Verse of Time

 

Shall I remain like this

to witness the golden hues in my verse

Unperturbed consciousness of materialism,

a fossil heart devoid of agitation

No one comes, opening the gate,

Astonishing distance,

vocal hatred

I am the seventh classical raaga— Nishad,

always a seeker of melody and rhythm

Shall I remain like this

waiting and waiting for

the traveler of the Sun-path

My dream-diction routes towards a dauntless selection

I too can go towards the horizon,

And can chant Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

Let the Verse of Time

rise and hum

These poems have been translated into English from original Assamese by Diganta Saikia, a poet and a translator

 

About the poet:

Shantanu Sharma (1971) is one of the leading poets of Assam. His collections of poetry include Nodir Sotat Brikkhar Chayat(1994), Kketiyakar Deshot(1996), Aranya Abhimukhe(1999), Ei Swapna Bishad Gatha(2005), Bishador Borosune Sorir Tiyale(2007), Leninor Ghora(2020), The Story (2024) and Kothantot2024).

Santanu Sarmar Nirbachito Kabita, selected poems by Shantanu Sharma (2025) has been edited by Diganta Saikia and Dwijen Kumar Das. A collection of poems edited by him is 'Kavita Kamrupa' (a collection of poems in the Kamrupiya dialect). He is a closely associated with progressive literary organisation Natun Sahitya Parishad.