MOHIT MITRA Poet Narrative

The Pensive Poet

Contest: The Pensive Poet
Sponsor: Constance La France

Yesterday, while disencumbering
the uppermost shelf
of an age-softened cupboard,
I disinterred a notebook
whose quiet custody
I had neglected
for longer than memory
readily admitted.

Its linen cover
had acquired the sepia patination
reserved for faithful objects.
The loosened binding
had relinquished
its final covenant,
while wayward folios
leaned from its margins
like hesitant emigrants
uncertain whether
remembrance still required
their return.

I smiled,
certain I was about to encounter
the young man
who had once believed
every grief
could be persuaded
into cadence.

Instead,

there were astonishingly
few poems.

Several folios
enshrined nothing
beyond a solitary date.

Others preserved
a single unfinished line,
abandoned in transit,
as though interruption
had quietly mistaken itself
for permanence.

One page
offered only a title.

Another,

a single hesitation—

Perhaps…

Thereafter,
I resumed
the slow liturgy
of turning pages,

until the room itself
entered recollection—

the metrical persuasion
of rain upon old windows,
intonations now exiled
from ordinary hearing,
faces whose names
had withdrawn
into the republic
of silence.

Then an apprehension,
gentle as dust,
settled upon me.

For a notebook
harbouring so little language,
it possessed
an inexplicable gravity.

No law of matter
could justify
such weight.

Until I understood.

Paper does not remember ink.

It remembers
hesitation.

Not the poems
that were written,

but every lyric
that declined
the imperfect shelter
of articulation;

every valediction
deferred into silence;

every avowal
that arrived
after its recipient
had already departed;

every recollection
for which no utterance
proved sufficiently
hospitable.

A blank page
is never empty.

It is merely
guarding a poem
that has refused
premature existence.

I returned the notebook
to the shelf
with a reverence
absent from my first touch.

Some books
are fastened
with paper and thread.

A poet's notebook
is bound
by everything
it persuaded itself
not to forget.

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Constance La France August 15, 2026 at 4:07 PM Mohit, wonderfully penned and congratulations on your win in my The Pensive Poet Contest, well done ⭐ MOHIT MITRA August 15, 2026 at 8:36 PM Constance, I receive your gracious words with profound gratitude. That 'The Pensive Poet' should find its way beneath your discerning gaze is itself an honour; that it should emerge from your contest with the laurel, a rarer one.✨ Thank you for reading not merely what the poem uttered, but perhaps what it withheld. Your generosity lends the silence between its lines a voice of its own. 🙏 In the grace of words, 📖✍️ Mohit Mitra

Sotto Poet August 12, 2026 at 6:56 AM Congratulations on your win in the contest with this extremely beautifully crafted poem. Mitra MOHIT MITRA August 12, 2026 at 8:02 AM Thank you, Sir Poet,🙏 for reading it with such generosity and care. Your appreciation means far more to me than a congratulation ordinarily would—an appreciation from a poet of such class carries a 'sublime value' of its own. I am genuinely humbled that the poem found its way to your discerning eye and resonated with you. Your words are, in themselves, a quiet honour...verily so! To brighter pages,✨ Mohit Mitra