Dark Frame
by Gopal Lahiri / June 28th, 2026
There is a room without windows.
a man cracks the glass doors
a woman drops a pearl earring.
In the portico, autumn sunlight pools turn
into squares, a crimson splash, a riot
of colour in the trees.
The chaos and noise make a kind of sense,
a few streetlamps cut the twilight,
the city outside is geometric and bare.
Inside the shadows spilling into a rectangle
are we wormholes to the other planets?
No one speaks above whisper.
There is no clear path, clear surface,
not all bare boots dry in the swamp,
names reduced to digits.
I stand before myself in a dark frame
Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 29 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose are published across more than seventy journals and anthologies globally. His poems are translated in 16 languages. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021. He has received Setu Excellence Award, Pittsburgh, US, in poetry. He is the first recipient of Jayanta Mahapatra National Award for Literature, 2024.
Read other articles by Gopal.
This article was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.
