Poetry
SUMMER 2023Tally for the Turn
by SIBANI SEN
Even when the gay forsythia limbs the snow
and spring hyacinths drape the long dead soil
or the cherry buds blush in the lengthening dusks
and pink dogwoods lip the slate slattern sky
March rains mute it all for me.
The new growth of the naked wintering trees
unfurl their sheen. All at once the daffodils dapple the muddy runnels, the quill
and crocus scatter the stubble midden. Light is surly and wavers still. The
magnolia ravishes for a single day. Quince and the myrtle release their gaudy
grille. How now to live after such solemn sleep, with so much lost, and so much
still hurting? The sap rushes. The season stings. Awash in pollen and the verdant
skin of spring, despite the dead, the trees insist. The green galls and I am
shocked awake again, bereaved leaf, yes, helpless to resist.
Apple Trees in a Meadow by Edward Mitchell Bannister (1890)
Sibani Sen
Sibani Sen’s poetry has appeared in publications including The Saranac Review, Off the Coast, Nixes Mate Review, Rogue Agent, and Main Street Rag. She has done collaborative projects with the History Design Studio at the Harvard Hutchins Center, the Concord Museum, the Beacon Street Arts Studios in Somerville, the former Green Street Studio in Cambridge, and the pop-up New Rasa Initiative group at the Public Theater in NYC. Her current projects include poetry and a monograph on the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra. She teaches creative writing and South Asian history and literature. She has a PhD in Indology from Harvard University and an MFA from Boston University.