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Mohit Mitra Poem
Author’s Note:
This sonnet is the sequel to "Ere She Trembled", as directed by the most esteemed Lustrous Lin; henceforth ventured by a poor votary of the Muse, who dared but follow the path her imagination had first ordained.
—The Jewel of the Crown—
When midnight loosed silver from her hair,
I stole where nectar’d dreams veiled all her breath;
She turn’d, and drew me through the perfumed air,
Till warmth made pale the hoary frost of death.
Her throat, where alabaster bloom’d, was warm;
Beneath my hand, her pulse began to sing;
She met mine eyes, and hush’d the gathering storm,
Whilst moonlight trembled on each secret thing.
Then breath to breath, where waking woo’d the dream,
Our silence melted, honey-sweet and deep;
The stars grew languid in their argent gleam,
And night forgot her ancient right to sleep.
Thou art the jewel sleeping in my crown;
I’d lose the world before I laid thee down.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
Before the cedar learn'd the speech of steel,
Or heartwood yielded to the carpenter,
Its argent rings kept covenant with the weal
Of thawing springs and every pilgrim star.
No bough begrudged the tempest what it took;
Each wound became another living book.
Then came the hands that quarried trunk from loam.
One sought a boundary where lambs might rest;
One sought a crossing, calling strangers home
Across the torrent's vehement unrest.
The timber neither gloried nor complain'd:
It served the purpose into which 'twas grain'd.
Long years I honour'd bridges for their grace,
And deem'd all fences born of timid fear,
Till autumn, in a lichen-haunted place,
Unveil'd a quieter arithmetic there.
An ancient rail, half-vestured now in moss,
Kept not one flower, yet shelter'd all from loss.
Beyond the hill a broken arch was thrown,
Its patient span relinquish'd to the stream.
The river mourn'd no less, yet journey'd on;
It would not counterfeit a perish'd dream.
Some crossings, once unfaithful to their end,
Grow holier by refusing to pretend.
Then first I saw the oak had held no will
To part the meadow or unite the plain.
No fibre cherish'd malice, good, or ill;
No grain distinguish'd blessing, loss, or gain.
The tree gave only what its nature could;
The hand alone interpreted the wood.
I search'd my heart and found, with inward shame,
How many fences I had call'd a scar,
Though they preserv'd what tenderness became;
How many bridges bore me from my star.
For every road I should have left untrod
Had ask'd my feet to wander out of God.
There are estrangements mercy ought to heal—
Proud silences no sunrise should forgive.
There are departures only fire can seal,
Lest dying falsehood counterfeit the live.
Discernment is the rarer, sterner art:
To know which timber waits within the heart.
So now I bless neither the flame nor nail,
Nor praise the wall, nor crown the spanning frame;
I ask but this when love and judgement fail:
What keeps another soul more true to flame?
For wood remembers only how to give.
It is the hand that teaches it
whether to divide—
or let another live.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
Author's Note: These verses are wrought for a poetess-painter, a fellow poet whose sorrow kindled their first ember; may this little flame, in time, find its way unto her.
—A Quatrain Beneath Eternity—
Upon one leaf, where gravity dreamed slow,
a rain-born orb did tremble under heaven;
her argent quiver made the star-fires flow,
and dawn stood hushed beneath the empyrean;
an ant climbed forth from bark's primeval shrine,
then paused before her—dark against divine.
He drew towards her as the firmament
bent its vast curvature about her sphere;
as though some adamantine gravitation sent
a wandering world where worlds should disappear;
he touched her light—and through his six limbs ran
a shudder older than the breath of man.
He deemed her painter, fashioned out of rain,
with leaf for canvas, sunlight for her dye;
she bore the green world's secret in her vein,
and whole lost heavens trembled in her eye;
their minute orbits crossed beneath the tree—
two infinitudes made briefly one decree.
Then he ascended towards the ancient bough,
she followed that inexorable green descent;
no wound accused the other of the why,
nor did their parting bear resentment;
and time, beyond the jurisdiction of years,
let Earth spend eleven seasons unawares.
He came again. The old light knew his tread;
she had not ceased her pilgrimage through green;
no reckoning rose between the living and dead,
nor any blade of old remembrance keen;
one quill returned above the waiting page—
four living lines outshone an earthly age.
Then came the storm. The leaf became a sea;
the firmament was riven from its throne;
the wind took him beyond all astronomy,
past every star by which the lost are known;
she quaked, and all her little heavens broke—
yet waited for the word he never spoke.
Perhaps he bore one universe to tell;
perhaps her own lay folded in the deep;
perhaps the storm extinguished one farewell
before its syllables had learned to sleep;
she moves still downward through the shaken green—
and somewhere, the fifth line remains unseen.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
Form: Seadna
Mist climbs the fields of Bru na Boinne
where cattle paths grow dim;
a lone hawthorn keeps the rath
where daylight thins to rim.
Old men passing touch their caps
and leave the thorn-tree be;
for roots run deep in hollow earth
and house the hidden Si.
When Atlantic winds go wandering
across the western plain,
a flute-note floats through folding grass
like breath from elder reign.
No hearth-light burns upon the rise,
no shepherd waits the sky—
yet silver steps set dew aflame
as though a court passed by.
The hawthorn leans but will not break
though winter scours the land;
for halls lie deep beneath its roots
no mortal hand has spanned.
Mist gathers round the fairy hill
as travellers wander wide;
for none would wake the Aos Si
who breathe on the other side.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
One MYSTERIOUS Chalice
I cannot name what nature hides from sight,
Yet hold its vastness in a shard of light.
The stars pour laws into a mortal cup,
The sea bends depth till thirst is filled, not up.
A bird’s brief hue outspans the thinking eye,
An insect burns what years cannot deny.
Thus all we know is less than what appears—
The MYSTERIOUS fits whole inside our fears.
Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
Contest: SOME KIND OF MYSTERY
Date: 9 February 2026
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
—A Song for Women Everywhere—
Verse I
I walked where the dark earth breathes after rain,
Where roots write stories under the ground;
The wind moved softly through leaf and grain
Like an ancient remembering sound.
There in that quiet my spirit learned
How the patient powers of life are earned.
Verse II
For Nature works without trumpet or throne—
She gathers the light, she shelters the seed;
Through storm and winter she stands alone,
Still giving the world the breath it needs.
The river may wound her banks with its flow,
Yet forests rise where her deep roots grow.
Pre-Chorus
And slowly the living truth appeared—
The same bright fire in women burns here.
Chorus
O daughters of courage, daughters of flame,
Steady as oceans and bright as the skies—
The world may falter, the world may change,
But hope is the light in your living eyes.
So here I stand, in honour and truth:
The Earth is stronger wherever you move.
Verse III
For woman carries that quiet might—
Not thunder alone, but the strength to renew;
She gathers the broken pieces of night
And shapes them gently into the new.
Where bitterness hardens the hearts of men,
She plants tomorrow again and again.
Verse IV
Once in an orchard the twilight broke—
Light stepped living from bark and air;
A silent brightness the branches spoke,
And every stone seemed awake and aware.
I asked no reason for what I had seen—
Some truths are larger than thought has been.
Repeat Chorus
Bridge
Yet still there burns in the depths of all
A star no measure of mind can claim;
For mystery answers no proud call—
And wonder itself protects that flame.
Final Chorus
O daughters of courage, daughters of flame,
Rising like dawn where the long nights cease—
Through patience, mercy, and quiet strength
You bend the hard arc of the world toward peace.
And from the deepest place in my soul
I bow to the women who make us whole.
Outro
For wherever a woman stands in grace,
the future quietly takes its place.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
—How to Thank Life for the Blow—
O Life, give ear—when thy disdainful tongue
strikes where my name has learned itself to stand,
and one syllable, though lightly flung,
falls through the ribs of what I understand—
must I, because the fibres ache,
call love a falsehood for the wound's own sake?
I have known speech accomplish what the sword
could scarcely do, though blood would mark its art;
one word may leave the mouth, yet lodge unseen
within the bastions of the listening heart,
and after the speaker's breath is gone,
still toll beneath the silence like a bell at dawn.
I will not crown abasement into grace,
nor make diminishment a lover's creed;
no tenderness requires me to efface
the sovereign line beyond which I recede;
I name the wound—and naming it, I know
that love does not make the injury less so.
Then reason broke its staff: the trees drove roots
up through the blue, beyond the mortal span,
while streams forsook their valleys and their routes
to climb the hills as silver rivers ran;
gravity, whose laws were known,
withdrew—and there arose the Snowy Sun alone.
Its pallid fire made winter's darkness bright,
as though the night had learnt another name;
the cold became a species of light,
and frost burned upward without ash or flame;
a flower drank midnight from its stem,
while stars grew black in a diadem.
O Life, give ear—I have not loved thee less
because thy hand has schooled my blood in pain;
nor shall I dress self-erasure as tenderness,
nor kneel to prove the bond I would retain;
the wound may enter, but it shall not reign
within the sovereign chamber of my name.
The blow is thine; its meaning is not thine—
what thou hast done shall never become my name;
I may defend the sovereignty that's mine
and still preserve the embers of the flame;
I may refuse the hand that deals the pain,
yet keep the love that taught my heart to remain.
Thus, Life, if thou shouldst strike me, let me feel—
I shall not forge an adamantine breast;
nor sanctify the hand that makes me kneel,
nor call self-betrayal love's profoundest test;
I can say No where dignity commands,
and still let love burn cleanly in my hands.
And should the trees root heavenward once more,
while rivers climb the hills in argent flight,
and the Snowy Sun suspend above the shore
its frozen aureole of fathomless light,
I shall not ask what overturned the blue—
I shall remain; and love shall remain too.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
—The Law of Entanglement—
I have tried every key:
the aureate key of morning,
the burnished wards of laughter,
music, sunlight, wine, remembered joy—
all the bright artifices of happiness;
yet none could turn the lock I carry within me.
Behind that darkness waits a country vast
with amber rooms and orchards heavy with light,
where my heart might finally unfasten its vigil
and feast without listening for the footfall of loss.
But joy
has laws.
Every lock
remembers
its key.
Mine
is not
mine.
One key belongs
to the woman I love,
whose nearness makes mercy
possible within the weather of my blood.
One belongs to my daughter,
whose voice can summon spring
from the most frostbitten chambers of me.
One belongs to my son,
whose presence can make
an ordinary hour incandescent.
They may
never know
what they carry.
That is
the anguish.
That is
the grace.
I can kindle
every lamp,
summon every
liturgy of joy—
still,
the door
remains.
For love
has made us
entangled:
what one life
possesses
another
may need
in order
to become
fully alive.
So I wait—
not broken,
but faithful—
knowing the country
is already there,
breathing beyond the lock,
and happiness
is not mine
to manufacture.
It waits
for three hands.
Three keys.
One opening.
And then—
I enter
the life
they
unlock
in me.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
—The Fortune Teller Who Miscalculated Eternity—
Beneath the carnival’s last amber light,
A wooden prophet sat in velvet still;
His painted eyes possessed no mortal sight,
Yet promised futures by a stranger’s will.
His copper heart concealed no hidden art—
Only the coded chambers of a heart.
I placed a coin once warmed by vanished hands,
A relic from a voice time stole from me;
Not seeking gold, nor kingdoms, nor commands—
I asked what years remained for him to be.
“Two years,” he said, “then newer fires shall burn;
My future waits, prepared for my return.”
I heard within his mechanical reply
The ancient wish that grief might be undone;
The human hunger written in the sky—
To seize tomorrow before it had begun.
For in his certainty, beneath the flame,
I heard my own unspoken plea for name.
I took the claw and hammer from the stall,
The tools of flesh against the forged divine;
One blow reduced his prophecy to fall,
And scattered years like dust before my eyes.
The oracle that claimed tomorrow’s throne
Could not survive the future it had known.
No witness came to measure what was lost;
No scholar weighed the fragments on the ground.
The proof of his great error paid the cost
Of vanishing before it could be found.
I held the coin and knew, beneath the night,
I had not broken him—I broke my sight.
For from his hollow chest, where circuits slept,
A strange and wordless garden seemed to rise;
The gears became the seeds no hand had kept,
The silence opened into unborn skies.
And I understood what no machine can see:
The unknown is not darkness—it is free.
Let engines count the hours they may endure,
Let kingdoms carve their triumphs into stone;
No calculation shall make tomorrow sure,
No system shall possess what is unknown.
For all that breathes beneath eternity’s art
Must leave the future free—and keep the heart.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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Mohit Mitra Poem
— A Shadow Waits for Always—
i do not come to you clean—
i come deliberate.
whatever remains of me
has already agreed.
i stand close
the way a confession does—
not asking,
already bending the air.
I am the pause
your breath forgets.
your presence teaches
my body a ritual posture:
attention sharpened into reverence,
desire folded like a blade
hidden in silk.
i would kneel,
but you are not an altar.
you are the reason
altars exist at all.
i do not yield—
i permit the undoing.
my shadow waits
in the hollow of your always.
after that,
even restraint breathes intimacy.
even silence
presses against skin.
we do not swear eternity.
we move as if observed by it—
and somehow,
it turns its gaze elsewhere.
Copyright © MOHIT MITRA | Year Posted 2026
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