Description

Sorkar’s poetry is in osmosis with the world and its graces, if we are patient enough to look. Time and space have no hold over the words, boundaries blur and what emerges is a luminal space — fluid, mesmerising, meandering like a flowing river. — Boudhayan Mukherjee

Braja K Sorkar’s In Sleep or Dream, I Bleed in Silence transports readers into the profound realms of Rumi and Hafiz’s spiritual yearnings. Through his poetry, Sorkar embarks on a quest for inner peace, balance, and understanding in a chaotic world — a journey that is both magical and mystical.  — Meenakshi Mohan

Braja K Sorkar is a bilingual author writing in Bengali and English, a poet, an editor and a critic. There are ten published titles to his credit, including the acclaimed collection, Syllables of Broken Silence (2021), for which he received The Indology Award (2021). He has been editing the prestigious literary magazine in Bengali, Tristoop, since 2001 and an English literary journal, Durgapur Review, since 2023. He edited and published an international anthology titled Voices Now: World English Poetry (2021). His poems have been translated into many Indian languages including Chinese and Spanish. His poetry has been included in many anthologies in English as well as in Bengali, Manipuri, and Hindi. He also edited a few anthologies of Bengali and Manipuri poetry in Bengali translation. Sorkar is an eminent translator among English, Bengali and Assamese. He translated and published Assamese poetry by Hiren Bhattacharya into Bengali, in addition to the regular translation of Bengali poetry and stories into English and vice versa. Presently, he is associated with Sahitya Akademi as a translator. He also runs a publishing house, Tristoop Books, in Durgapur, West Bengal.

FROM THE BOOK

I Withdraw from Myself

It often happens to me

in my dream;

I am standing in front of a moving train, or

I am being chased by a huge bull.

Sometimes

I jump from the top of a hill

and falling down, I have an intense

sex game with a lost woman.

 

It also happens that I am dead;

there is no one by my side.

A wonderful goddess comes and

touches my dead body.

I wake up again.

 

I’m in a broken dream

again and again.

 

I withdraw from myself,

and come back again,

time and again…

 

A Song of Night

A sleeping pill, a bit of the moon,

and endless fascination.

The night knows all —

my failure and inadequacy —

you know, the principles of success.

 

My hands and feet are running,

the head is fixed, the neighbour’s

cat is sleeping in the sun.

 

Afternoon light hangs

from the cornice.

I raise my hands towards

the sunset, towards

the vanishing blues.

 

Let the night stand on the porch today.

Let me dream and make the night

sleepless without a pill.

 

Border

Someone has drawn a straight line

between us, divided two lives. A border

has grown, keeping us distant in body and mind.

We both are now citizens of different lands!

 

Some people try to make a borderline, between countries

and people, culture, and human values.

 

The sky has no border, no limit. I know it.

There is no boundary inside the human mind.

How are these boundaries being created?

Who or whom is doing it?

An invisible hand, secretly making countless boundaries —

the world is breaking into pieces like isolated islands.

 

I can’t touch her. I can’t cross the borderline between us.

Does she sleep at night alone under the same sky?

I wonder, perhaps she too!

 

Only faded stars wake up in the gloomy sky,

borderless between latitude and longitude.