Poetry: Rachna Singh

Rachna Singh

The Charioteer

The inspiration of this poem came from a glorious sunrise and sunset I watched in the Shivalik hills. It brought to mind the tales my grandmother told me about the Sun God or Surya devta.

He streaks across the dusky firmament,
With white steeds at the fore
so say the texts on ancient lore

On a slumberous morn,
He weaves the sky in a warp and weft of gold,
At high noon,
He paints the vault of heaven, in colours of copper and yellow so bold,

And then the dusky, seductress eve,
Lightly tiptoes in and gathers him in her enticing fold

Spent, his day’s work done,
He sinks in her arms, an embrace so secure,
Only to rise like a phoenix,
As another sleepy morn knocks at his door,
And beckons him once again
To bathe the landscape in tints of rose and gold

 

Life Is A Cup Of Tea

 

This poem is more of a whimsy and came to me as I was brewing my morning cuppa. But now that I think of it, it was probably TS Eliot's line 'I have measured out life with coffee spoons' that kickstarted this thought process.

 

A faint gurgle

A hiss

Dark Brown liquid

Cascades

A stream

Boiling hot

It falls into the

the depths of

A teacup.

 

Turbulent, Tumultuous

Swirling

then settles down

slowly

gently swishing

Like Life

Blended

Like Life

The brew ready to drink

Steaming, sweating

Now moving

Now still

Like Life.

 

 

The Vow 

The world has become a place of strife and pain. We need to make the world  a realm of peace and love. This poem is inspired by this somewhat overzealous utopian thought.

The sky wore a mantle of lazy clous that day
Some white, some ominous and grey.
 
A light breeze made the mantle dance in abandon gay
Like the circlet of a maypole on a mayday.
 

Then the clouds of grey a cluster made
Wearing a dark parasol that did shade
The verdant landscape of pretty jade.
 
As though saddened to see the colour of nature pale
The sky with remorse wept, dripping copious tears into the vale.
 
The sun seeing this unhappy byplay
Thought to make things happy and gay
So with abandon he sprayed,
Molten gold across the sky
With a burst of sunrays
 
The sky turned from grey to gold in a beat
As the Goldsmith poured molten heat
Into the azure crucible with its block of peat
And in the blink of an eye the sky
Became a bejewelled tree.
 
Let us then
You and I
Splash the gold of glad tidings across the sky
Let the world with joy suffuse
And let the canker of sorrow diffuse
This world a happy place let us make
You and I
This vow let us take.

 

Bio: Rachna Singh has a doctorate in English literature and is a former bureaucrat. She has authored Penny Panache (2016) Myriad Musings (2016) Financial Felicity (2017) & The Bitcoin Saga: A Mixed Montage (2019). She writes regularly for National Dailies and has also been reviewing books for the The Tribune for more than a decade. She runs a YouTube Channel, Kuch Tum Kaho Kuch Hum Kahein, which brings to the viewers poetry of established poets of Hindi & Urdu. She loves music and is learning to play the piano. Her collection of short stories ‘Phoenix in Flames’ is forthcoming.

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Setu, September 2023