Swayam Prashant (pen-name of Dr. Prashanta Kumar Sahoo) was born in the undivided Cuttack district, Odisha. He was formerly an Associate Professor of English at Sarupathar College, Assam, India. He has written six books and two booklets. They are : Evaluation of Textbooks in the Teaching of English (based on his Ph.D. thesis); Values in Life (based on a research project on Vedic and Upanishadic writings); Knowledge Tree (miscellaneous prose writings); Haiku from the Garden of My Own (poetry); Live Like a Man (poetry); Premras Amrit (poetry in Assamese); Virgin Land Impregnated (a thematic study of Canadian folk songs); and    Joy of Love (a unique booklet of love poems).

Silence, the Real Wealth

You came late, my friend
others have already taken everything
and are making the world with them
my treasury is empty
only 'silence' is left
will it be of any use to you? 
the Great Giver asked.
That will be sufficient for me, the poet replied.
I shall knead patterns out of it with love 
and place them before you as my humble offerings

simply bless them with your benign touch,  my Lord,

I am sure
they will shine far more brightly
than all other things combined!

The Disguise

She was darkness, she said,
ever shrouded in mystery;
she was the  Temptation
maybe, a siren
but for the poet 
she was moonlight
wrapped in the  petals of silence
smiling through the eyes of distant horizon
love in disguise.

On the Wings

It was a wonder
when I flew to the sun;
it was a joy
when I wandered on the moon;
it was a pain
when I fell to the earth.
I was clamped to the ground
but with imagination and on the wings of words
I went everywhere.