MOHIT MITRA Poet Free verse

The Cathedral of Unforgotten Fire

I found your name
where winter had buried its bells—
beneath the frost-veined silence
of an abandoned orchard
where roses remembered
the colour of wounds.

You were not the flame
that devours the forest;
you were the secret ember
the earth conceals
after the stars have surrendered
their silver kingdoms to dawn.

I carried you like an ancient relic,
a relic no temple could contain—
a sapphire of sorrow,
a fragment of forgotten heaven,
a prayer written in the language
of rain upon ruined marble.

The moon, jealous of your radiance,
lowered her veiled face
behind the cathedral clouds,
while Orion loosened his arrows
and the rivers paused
to hear your shadow sing.

For you were never merely a lover—
you were the myth
my soul had been rehearsing
before my body learned
the alphabet of longing.

Your voice was a violin
left untouched for centuries,
yet when awakened,
it made the dust of kingdoms rise
and taught the silent statues
how to weep.

I drank from your absence
as monks drink from sacred wells;
not because emptiness nourished me,
but because even your leaving
carried the perfume
of your arrival.

The roses around my window
have grown strange since then—
each petal holding a universe,
each thorn preserving
a small, invisible eclipse.

They say love is a wound.

They have never seen
how wounds become windows,
how darkness becomes a doorway,
how a heart once shattered
can become a constellation
with its own forgotten mythology.

So return not as a flame,
beloved—

return as the ash remembers fire,
as the ocean remembers the moon,
as the earth remembers the footsteps
of the gods who walked upon it
and vanished.

For I have built you
not a throne of gold,
not a palace of roses,

but a cathedral of unforgotten fire—

where every candle is a memory,
every silence a hymn,
and every breath I take
is the universe whispering:

you were never lost;
you were only becoming eternal.

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Alison A Smith July 29, 2026 at 9:54 PM a prayer written in the language of rain upon ruined marble. you were the myth my soul had been rehearsing For I have built you not a throne of gold, not a palace of roses, but a cathedral of unforgotten fire— you were never lost; you were only becoming eternal. Beautiful. MOHIT MITRA July 29, 2026 at 10:02 PM Dear Alison, The lines thou hast gathered are among those I released with the greatest hesitation. To find them returned to me in thy keeping is a quiet assurance that they have reached the heart for which, perhaps unknowingly, they were written. A poet can scarcely petition for a richer recompense. As thou knowest, beauty abideth not in the thing beheld, but in the eye that beholdeth it. Thy generous spirit hath bestowed upon these verses a grace beyond their own deserving. Until beauty calls again, Mohit Mitra

Angela Terry July 29, 2026 at 12:24 PM The magical language in your poem is breathtaking. My favorite line is "before my body learned the alphabet of longing". MOHIT MITRA July 29, 2026 at 9:24 PM Dear Angela, Your choosing that particular line touched me more deeply than I can readily say. It has long seemed to me that longing acquires its first grammar long before the mind is capable of naming it, and I suspect that every enduring poem is, in some measure, an attempt to recover that forgotten tongue. Your pausing there assured me that the thought had crossed the solitude between one imagination and another without forfeiting its quietness. I thank you not merely for your generous words, but for reading with such inward attentiveness. A poet is fortunate indeed when a reader recognises the pulse beneath the phrasing rather than the phrasing alone. Your visit to the poem has left precisely that kind of grace behind. Carry the ember! Mohit Mitra