MOHIT MITRA Poet Blank verse

The Manuscript Unstolen

—After the First Reading—



The apple loosed no oracle to earth.

It fell.

The branch resumed its ancient poverty.
No leaf looked down.
The wind withheld its praise.
Only the ground, receiving what was given,
kept faith with something older than the tree.

We gave the motion names.

The orchard did not answer.

Morning entered every root alike.
The fruit surrendered neither truth nor sign;
it merely found the place prepared for it
before the dust remembered it was dust.

The brook instructed no one.

Stone by stone
it passed, and every stone remained a stone,
yet each lay otherwise when water moved.
The current never sought to prove itself.

It simply did not cease.

Above, the falcon wrote no law in air.
Its turning altered nothing that could last.
Yet when it vanished, heaven seemed less empty
than while it flew.

We lowered cords,
and measured height with hands that could not reach.

We called it gravity
Because the page exceeded literacy.

A beetle crossed the road.

No kingdom shook.

Still something entered quietly the world
which all our reckonings had left outside.
The dust received it without argument.

The dust has always known
what learning comes too late to understand.

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Alison A Smith July 29, 2026 at 10:17 PM The wind withheld its praise. before the dust remembered it was dust. It simply did not cease. We called it gravity what learning comes too late to understand. Through your own words the tale is told. MOHIT MITRA July 31, 2026 at 9:15 AM Dear Alison, Your way of gathering those few lines instead of attempting to explain the whole poem touched me deeply. It reminded me that a reader sometimes preserves a poem more faithfully than its author can. I was especially grateful to see you pause where the poem itself slows its breathing. Your closing words, "Through your own words the tale is told," carry a quiet generosity. I hoped the poem would trust the ordinary world enough to let it speak without argument, and it means much to know that trust reached you. Thank you for reading with such attentive stillness. Encounters like this make the solitary labour of writing feel unexpectedly shared. In shared wonder, Mohit Mitra