Palash Mahmud is a bilingual writer, book critic based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His poetry, literary reviews and criticisms appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Active Muse, League of Poets, Superstition Review, The Punch Magazine, Kitaab, Ephemeral Elegies, The Bosphorus Review of Books, Poetry Potion, Trouvaille Review, Poet’s Choice and forthcoming elsewhere. He reads & reviews for Sepia Quarterly.
Palash Mahmud writes on his personal blog PM Review. You can also find him palash.mahmud.10 on Facebook & @palashmahmud10 on Twitter.
Many nights before –
we met on a summer beach
under an old olive tree.
Fallen leaves filling the cracks
of stones up, flirting with
the shimmering stellar.
We prolonged
to absorb the darkness
as the dead skin to tears.
In the Mediterranean air,
you said, intoxication of lust
streams through.
Let’s go to the sea, you insisted
to show me how Virginia Woolf
dancing tango with Kafka
With the waves,
minds were submissive
to each other.
ii
Long days later-
we met in an autumn noon
near a wild iris garden.
Drifting pollen dribbled
the sea of tranquility
before it passes on.
Can we stay a bit long?
Till the nightfall breaths.
As the sunbeam to dewdrop.
Once I heard-
time passes slowly
over the hilltops.
Let’s go on the Monte Cinto
I will show the green
ridges of our longings.
We will have an unused time
to climb up-
of our cutting desires.
Don’t you know?
We will be lost until we tie
our part with the whole in nature.
Say it now-
Where will we go first?
Mountain or sea?
Poetry in this post: © Palash Mahmud
Published with the permission of Palash Mahmud