Ashes Of The Dawn (Sonnet Sequence) Poem by Dipankar Sadhukhan

I. The Empty Dawn

When sleep withdrew, I woke to find you gone,
Your scent still lingered in the broken air;
I searched each corner till the ghost of dawn
Revealed but dust where once your steps were fair.

Despair, a meadow bound in ashen chain,
Received my grief as earth receives the rain;
I dreamt you hid where emerald tendrils creep,
Yet vines confessed—you've crossed another plain.

The soil slipped sudden from beneath my feet,
The sky's blue veil was torn and swept away;
Beneath that dome we swore our hearts would meet,
Yet vows dissolved in death's deceitful clay.

O vanished love, what refuge can remain?
The sun now burns to cauterize my pain.

II. The Betrayal

Within my womb of faith a child was sown,
A seed of joy you crushed before its bloom;
You left my heart a temple overthrown,
Its altar dark, its god consumed in gloom.

O traitor flame, you lured me with your light,
Then left me scorched amid the dust of lies;
The day devours itself in fevered blight,
The night grows fat on faith's discarded cries.

Now let the sun ignite its fiercest blaze,
And burn all roots of doubt that dare to live;
Let night breed blackness deeper than its maze,
That I within its void may still forgive.

If hell's abyss could cradle me from pain,
I'd choose its dark to dream of you again.

III. The Poet's Resurrection

Then ages passed—the world forgot your face,
Your hateful ghost erased from mortal art;
A poet came, with mercy in his grace,
And took my trembling hand to heal my heart.

He whispered songs of gain from every loss,
And tuned my breath to beauty's silent chord;
Each scar became a verse, each wound a gloss,
Till love returned, reborn within his word.

My old adornments fell like autumn's leaves,
My body clothed in spring's renewing flame;
Through verse and voice, the mortal self deceives—
I rose again, and sang your vanished name.

In poetry's embrace, my soul could see,
That death was but the seed of melody.

IV. The Eternal Lovers

Together now we sail the boundless deep,
Through time's own sea where mortal charts expire;
Our hearts, two flames no shadow's hand can keep,
Unquenched by age, undimmed by earth's desire.

Though youth and age may wear a different guise,
Our spirits twine like ivy round one dream;
Beyond all shores, where love's horizon lies,
We walk as light upon creation's stream.

The cosmos hums our vow in endless tune,
Its pulse repeats what mortal lips began;
Beneath the sun, above the silver moon,
We dwell eternal, woman merged with man.

For love defies the scythe, the tomb, the years—
And conquers death through poetry and tears.

By Dipankar Sadhukhan
Kolkata, India
Copyroghts@May01,2025