The Benediction Of Lost Time (Sonnet Sequence) Poem by Dipankar Sadhukhan

I. The Garden of Fading Echoes

Beneath the corridors of vanished years,
Soft songs of memory float through the haze;
Each tender note revives forgotten tears,
And stirs the soul with half-remembered praise.

The courtyard breathes its scent of rust and rain,
Where love once bloomed and laughter blessed the air;
Now only shadows in a pale refrain
Whisper of hearts that learned too much despair.

The hours, like stones, erode the pulse of youth,
Yet leave their sculpted calm upon the whole;
For loss itself unveils eternal truth—
That time's decay refines the mortal soul.

So let me bless the years that slipped away,
Their vanished music lights my heart today.

II. The Voices of the Vanished Spring

The cuckoo sang upon the bending bough,
Her echo drifted through the summer air;
Though silence fills her tender branches now,
The sweetness lingers, floating everywhere.

O laughter of the fields, O light of morn,
You bloom again within my heart's decline;
Though every flower from life's green path is shorn,
Their phantom scent still glows like holy wine.

The world turns pale, yet beauty will not die;
Its ghostly shimmer crowns the passing years.
In every loss, a richer truth will lie—
The joy that shines through sorrow's veil of tears.

And though the Spring has flown on fragile wings,
I live within the song her memory sings.

III. The Lovers by the River of Time

We sowed our dreams upon the patient clay,
Two kindred souls beneath the sleepless sky;
Our sweat became the salt of toil's bright day,
Our love, the field where all our seasons lie.

The furrows bloomed with laughter's golden seed,
And harvest moons arose on eyes that bleed;
Yet time, the reaper, cut the cords of deed,
And left us wondering what our labour need.

Still in my heart, the ploughshare gleams anew,
And memory sows her seeds in gentle loam;
Though I have lost the earth I tilled with you,
My spirit reaps the yield that called me home.

Thus every wound becomes a fertile sign—
The soul ascends through love's unfinished line.


IV. The City of Unreturning Wings

No bird shall cross this city's sleepless glow,
No foot retrace the alleys of my youth;
The bridges hum with echoes far below,
And every lamp recalls a buried truth.

The midnight trembles where our footsteps fell,
The stairways sigh with murmurs of desire;
I climb the shadowed heights, a voiceless shell,
My breath a prayer to love's extinguished fire.

O Faithless Time, thou thief of tender grace,
Thou left me rich with what I cannot hold;
Thy silence carves eternity's embrace
In ruins wrapped with melancholy gold.

Though none return, the silence softly clings—
The dead of love still move on unseen wings.

V. Benediction of the Departed Hours

Now all is still—the stars dissolve in light,
And dreams withdraw like tides from barren shore;
Yet in their wake, a tranquil heart takes flight,
To count its griefs as blessings evermore.

O Memory, thou art the holiest shrine,
Where joy and anguish kneel with equal tone;
In every wound I feel thy touch divine,
And in each tear, thy sacred beauty shown.

For love is death, yet death is love's return—
The flame endures though ashes fade away;
What once was night now gleams with kindled morn,
What once was loss becomes the soul's array.

So let me kiss the dust of all I knew—
The past is rich because it loved me too.

By Dipankar Sadhukhan
Kolkata, India.
Copyrights@October05,2025.