Love Me Most When my Leaves, Do Wither(Poems)

Like ants that carry a small grain of rice that is its world for sustenance, I too dress up my thoughts in different poems, seated all alone like Santiago on my little skiff of life, facing the huge sea of times, where swathes of people's lives may be swept away all distraught, as discrimination rules the roost. Those seated on the margin, oft suffer this way and that, within the ambit of discrimination life offers. For me, silence holds a voice that's louder than a roar. A poet for me is prescient. Every poem complements other poems, and draws readers on to a legacy. Like George Santayana, I have no axe to grind. I have only my thoughts to burnish. After all, people can bring only their own potentials to the table. Poems are reflective of spatial views, of values, that are liberal or human; rigid or unapologetic. It is the string that holds on to them. As I sat on the cruise down the Nile, that bothered my diasporic journey; or looked up at the mummies lying quietly through time; or gazed at the Sphinx thinking autumn could have been my second spring, I dwelt on thoughts, sentiments, truths, resistance and longings like the cormorants. When I walk down the ramp of my poems, I am not a woman, I am a human being. I am the Pied Piper meaning to undo many of those sins out there in a fractured world. I find myself in the Tower of London in wild eyed wonder, looking for our Kohinoor. ----- Navamalati Neog Chakraborty About the Writer Navamalati Neog Chakraborty is a writer-translator, poet and artist, critic and reviewer. Her individualistic style is incredibly fluid and passionate. She looks over her shoulder at life that follows the contemporary world with modern conviction. A Kolkata based writer, her nuanced writing is refreshing in thought and fluid in presentation. Always a humanist icon, her gentle persuasive argument is her conscious choice.