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Banyan

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for Jane Draycott

As winter secrets
 melt
 
with the purple
 sun,
 
what is revealed
 is electric
 
notes tune
 unknown scales,
 
syntax alters
 tongues,
 
terracotta melts
 white,
 
banyan ribbons
 into armatures
 
as branch-roots
 twist, meeting
 
soil in a circle.
 Circuits
 
glazed
 under cloth
 
carry
 alphabets
 
for a calligrapher’s
 nib
 
italicised
 in invisible ink,
 
letters never
 posted,
 
cartographer’s
 map, uncharted
 
as phrases fold
 so do veils.

Copyright © 2014 by Sudeep Sen. Permission granted by the author.
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Banyan

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  • Poet, translator, artist, and editor Sudeep Sen studied English literature at the University of Delhi and was an Inlaks Scholar at Columbia University, where he earned an MS in journalism. Recognized as one of India’s finest younger poets, Sen has published more than a dozen collections of poetry, including The Lunar Visitations (1990), Postmarked India: New and Selected Poems (1997), Lines of Desire (2000), Distracted Geographies (2003), Rain (2005), and Aria (2011), winner of the A.K. Ramanujan Translation Award. Blue Nude: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1979-2014 (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) is forthcoming. His collections of prose include Postcards from Bangladesh (2002). Sen has translated poetry and worked as an editor on many anthologies, including The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry by Indians (2012) and Midnight’s Grandchildren: Post-Independence English Poetry from India (2004). He is the editorial director of Aark Arts and editor of Atlas, a journal of new writing and art.

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