MOHIT MITRA Poet Sestina

Belated Morn (DHR)

—What Time Takes Before We Wake—



I deemed a life a province ruled by clock,
that every loss must cross some final door,
and what the dark withheld was yielded back as morn;
I trusted memory to enshrine my name,
whilst years, beneath the liturgy of body,
wrought their unheralded dominion into silence.

Yet age doth enter not with trumpet, but with silence;
it filches, grain by grain, the sovereignty of clock,
until some kingdom forfeited within the body
hath crossed, ere we perceive it, through an unseen door;
the face still answers to the summons of its name,
whilst gold, unknowing, crowns the counterfeit of morn.

There are departures indistinguishable from morn,
for naught in the bright air proclaims silence;
the heart yet keeps its covenant with its name,
the pulse performs its ancient office beneath the clock,
and yesterday seems safely sealed behind its door,
though something hath already altered in the body.

Then did I learn: the future is within the body,
not as tomorrow, but as the treachery of morn;
each year conducts some former self beyond a door,
and what we call forgetting is but deepening silence,
whilst time, like some invisible sexton, winds the clock,
until even loss grows strange beneath its own name.

Wherefore I feared not chiefly the extinction of a name,
but that time should revise its scripture in the body;
for time doth not merely travel onward with the clock—
it bears us hence, though every day resemble morn,
and leaves no footprint save its consecrated silence,
whilst we, poor witnesses, enquire what lies beyond the door.

Now September comes; I keep no vigil at the door.
Let former hours depart and take their borrowed name;
let what must dwindle dwindle into silence;
let time fulfil its austere workmanship upon the body.
For waking is not finding some imperishable morn,
but hearing, ere we knew it, what was ticking in the clock.

The door knows my name; silence inhabits the body;
the last morn comes unbidden—the clock has ceased.
And I, who feared the silence, find the door within the name.

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Lin Lane August 27, 2026 at 12:59 PM Mohit, there are not many poets that I read with awe at their ability and talent to write with such emotion that moves me to want to read more, even if what I've read from them is epic pages long. You are one of the very few that leave me longing for more lines of your wisely stated stanzas... your heartfelt way of describing the beauty and suffering of love with a vocabulary that has me jealous and in want of more of what I've yet to learn. MOHIT MITRA August 27, 2026 at 8:18 PM Dear Lin, Thy words humble me beyond praise. That thou hast lent thy precious eyes to my poor verses, and found in their smallness something worthy of lingering, is a grace I scarcely know how to receive. 🤔 A crow cannot teach a hummingbird the measure of its flight, for it hath never fathomed those boundless, oceanic firmaments where the smallest wing may astonish heaven. Such vision belongs to the eagle—and to my eyes, thou art one such monarch of poetic magnificence. 🕊️ Thou hast made a mere grain of sand look upward and behold the infinite. ✨ "A mote may rise where seraphim have flown, Yet dares not call the empyrean its own; The least wing trembles—but the heavens hear, When sovereign eyes stoop low, and draw it near. Thus, Lady Lin, thy gaze hath made me see: The vastest skies may stoop to one small me." 🌹