Guest-Editorial: Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar

We have been gazing long enough into the abyss of a rapidly unraveling social structure, moral injustice and above all the changing climates and the ecosystem going to rack and ruin. A vast section of us ignore the truths, but even ignoring a truth is a hollow way to acknowledge an anomaly in a false-faith. So we all have been gazing into the abyss in our own way. Dear Friedrich Nietzsche, does this mean that the abyss has been gazing back into us, changing us, making us lift that safety latch? 

We know even if we pretend not to that climate is shrinking the scope of the world as we know it. Is it that sense of doomsday that makes us more careless? Does it give rise to the most corrupt governments in eons everywhere? Is it the reason why we sit on the edge of reasons and sometimes take the leap, shoot our classmates or brothers across the borders? Did we know it always? The cave men us? The new world explorer us? 

Poets are unstable catalysts. They can undo the things undone. Perhaps the poets should scriven the holy chants in favour of the social and eco justice. May be their collective consciousness stir up a change towards the better sustenance.

If I were a poet (wait a minute, I am!) I would have written this:

Where The Nuclear Power Plant Melted Down

I hear the footsteps, do not turn, murmur,

"There, they say, roams a wolf, lone,

near the core, in the epicenter."

"I know." Says the wolf.

I steal a peek and lower my eyes.

The beast of this radioactive zone

looks like a deformed reincarnation

of my old man. I close my eyes.

If you gaze at the wolf long enough

the wolf will leave a trace of it inside you.

Ashes still fly when wind so desires.

My hazmat suit makes me a traveller

in space sent in a sleep capsule,

and now that I have seen and reported

about the ruin they no longer need my existence. 

Or

I might delve into the life and desire during the duress of the drifting climate and write - 

A Family During This Eco-deconstruction

Midst of this haze

the sun rises and sets.

We can discern the shades, 

shapeless, tempera smudges

between the time-poles of darkness. 

The pink eye hurts the grey sky

bulges out, pushes the nerves.

Clouds at the corners clot like gunks.

Rain tastes saline, and acidic, of mucus. 

Midst this chaos my wife fabricates 

a home I deconstruct using the daily news.

Kushal Poddar

Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

---

Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice: Authors

Jeff Hardin Rae Armantrout Ted Kooser Derek Coyle Robert Frede Kenter Dustin Pickering Ibrahim Honjo Sayani Mukherjee Dr Biswajit Chatterjee Sophia Naz

Belinda Subraman Dan Flore III Gopal Lahiri Deepak K. Choudhary Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth Amit Shankar Saha Dr. Santosh Bakaya Stephen Cole Duane Vorhees ***

---

Setu, July 2023

Ted Kooser (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Ted Kooser (Theodore J. Kooser) was born in Ames, Iowa, on April 25, 1939. He is one of the most influential voices in modern poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Kooser was one of the first poets laureate selected from the Great Plains, was part of the Midwest Poetry Renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, and is known for his conversational style of poetry.

 

I Turned My Back

I turned my back for only a moment
and when I looked again the tide of the prairie
was draining away. Houses were emerging
out of the green, then sidewalks and streets.
Whole cities had been under the grass all along
and none of us knew.  Sage hen, hawk, badger
and antelope followed the tide's retreat,
leaving cat, dog and rabbit, and small children
were playing in the last puddles of green.

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Rae Armantrout (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Rae Armantrout (born April 13, 1947) is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics. Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book Versed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award.[1] The book later received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her poetry, including an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

 

 

Dated

 

We were smart to conflate

time with space

in metaphors

so long ago.

As I recall,

time passed quickly

going downstream

in the gondolas.

Us playing tourist

made the days seem

like bits of local color.

We never saw

the houses collapse.

That was before our time

And after.

 

 

 

 

Zip

 

1

Blessed, flippant

the birds zip

and chatter,

each rephrasing

its own phrase

forever.

(“The authentic slapback,”

it says on the label.)

“Well, well, well,”

chimes one out there.

 

2

Loopy and clear,

my writing

in old journals---

now hurried, ragged.

What’s the rush?

Letters missing, thoughts

astray

in the blue air.

 

 

 

Listing

 

To list objects

as you come upon them

takes a lot of faith—

but faith in what?

 

*

One red stone

amid the gray cement cobble.

Dog yapping in one

empty front yard.

Light on one leaf

amid a shiny throng.

 

*

The trick

is to recognize a thought

you’ve had before

and mark it.

If you can’t do that,

you’re lost?

 

*

Union Slough

wanders

through brown sedge.

 

 

 

Until

 

To present as,

identify with

the breathing space

between the big

moments

where nothing

much happens, but

anything still could.

 

*

Let the cloud

stay where it is—

two eye sockets

near the bottom,

one closing,

one enlarging

until

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Derek Coyle (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Derek Coyle published his first collection, Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow in a dual-language edition in Tranas Sweden and Carlow Ireland in April 2019, and it was shortlisted for the Shine Strong 2020 poetry award. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s, Ireland. His second collection, Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster is due in 2023.

Derek Coyle has published poems in The Irish Times, Irish Pages, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Texas Literary Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Orbis, Skylight 47, Assaracus, and The Stony Thursday Book.

 

 

Carlow Poem #157

 

I went out to Clogrennane

in search of a good thorn

autumn was the right time for it

the leaves bare their thorns exposed

I picked several

sorry poor brambles for nipping

these off

forgive me

I carried them home in my pocket

and then set about

replacing the worn out stylus

on my record player

wondering who’d be best

to test out the new stylus

I settled for Tom Waits

something of the crunch of gravel

in his voice

I switched it on

and lifted the arm across

somewhat crackly at first

there was Tom

‘I’m big in Japan’

it was then they came to the window

the open door

down from rooftops

down from lampposts

rooks and robins a pigeon

and then some cats

hopped the fence

ignoring birds

ignoring the dogs who

wagged their tails to the rhythm

the beat of Tom’s tune

they could hear the sound

of a summer of crows

the June cries of a fox

the furtive sounds of rabbits in winter

the tinkle of rain drops

on the leaves of a larch in September

in pitch perfect harmony with Tom’s vocal

orchestrated through the record player

and the thing is

I thought I saw a goose

the one you mention Merwin

in your poem to Po Chui-I

the one who escaped famines

wars human and natural pestilence

he who knew Tang Dynasty China

and the palm trees of Hawaii

here he was smiling

for a moment

taking a rest you might say

re-charging his batteries

in suspension from worry

not wondering

or trying to figure out

what to do

since we’ve set sail

on this sea

the ice-caps melting

the earth heating up

 

 

Carlow Poem #181

I only realized how far

I had travelled to get here

over my Cocopops this Sunday,
the milk turning a delightful chocolatey brown.

I was thinking of how I live
in a house of concrete and brick

containing coccolithophores,
the very lads crushed in the limestone

of the Great Pyramids of Giza –
maybe I wouldn’t have to go see them

after all – and how the sulphur
in the protein molecules of my hair

had blown into the atmosphere
after the eruption of Vesuvius –

another one off the list.
Sitting still at my kitchen table, I realized

the water in my eyes had travelled
on asteroids, icy comets to get here,

hurtling through space
long before the dreams of Time.

How my little toe was hoarding
brine from an ancient trader

sailing down the Strait of Hormuz.
Sinbad the Sailor

smacking Royal Fillets of Mackerel from his lips
and he voyaging out of Baghdad

with frankincense destined for India.
How the snot in my nose could be

made from particles of Chaucer.
Something from his fingernails, let’s say,

and he biting them
bored in a tavern in Southwark,

gawking at the face of a pilgrim Merchant
trudging out to Canterbury

another rainy Sunday in April.
Sure who’d need to head to church

to pray of a Sunday
and he a living shrine

to the creative energies of the cosmos,
the presence of that God’s dream

in his every cuticle, every particle?

 

 

Carlow Poem #167

What struck everyone was the terrible stench.
This was the conversation starter for years after,
over glasses of wine, snifters of whiskey,

the foul stink, where wood polish
and varnish, the whiff of stale air,
a certain mustiness, was the accepted odour.

It was strange, it all happened
on the same day. Caretakers rose
from their beds, kissed their children goodbye,

and headed into work, Vienna, Hamburg, Rome.
In the Galleria Doria Pamphilz
someone was hovering the floor,

others polishing dusty frames,
the lights on, the hum of portable
ear pods blasting in the latest pop,

before someone walked in and was hit. Looking up,
the glorious portrait by Velázquez.
Pope Innocent – virtually smothered –

standing on top of his throne,
a strain on his face,
attempting to keep his fingers

on his nose. He was squeezing hard,
trying to stifle the malodorous stench,
buried beneath stacks

of rubbish, empty drink cans,
the plastic packages of sweets,
ice-lollies, beer bottles, milk cartons.

Lost to sight the vermillion of his robes,
his red cap askew on his head,
the gold and white of throne and soutane

swamped in garish yellow, lurid greens,
the work of midnight oil, design teams
in high-rise offices, Milan, Chicago, London.

The news started to arrive in,
phone calls to Vienna confirmed,
Bruegel’s children were throwing

empty Coke cans around the town square,
racing down small hillocks of trash,
empty tetra packs of orange juice,

plastic egg cartons, old tyres,
petrol cans, broken doors, twisted
lines of reinforced steel from buildings

no longer required. The word
from Hamburg was the Wanderer
in the Sea of Fog was disorientated, lost.

Not in misty clouds
descended from mountains.
He had disappeared in the dull haze

that rises above an industrial scale
rubbish tip. He was down, gasping
for want of fresh air,

on top of some mountain peak
in a romantic valley. Now
he would be unable to find the path down;

piles of used clothes, jeans, fleeces, shoes;
the detritus of fast fashion, discarded
summer dresses, hats worn once at a wedding,

blouses for a season; sponges,
toothbrushes, floss. Nothing
had prepared him for this.

It was making the news in Washington.
The Madonna was last seen in the National Gallery,
holding her child above the litter,

her arms aching. At any moment
she’d see her child slip, to drown
in an ocean of discarded coffee cups, 

broken televisions, leaking batteries.

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Duane Vorhees (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Duane Vorhees

Duane Vorhees is an American poet in Thailand. He is the author of The Many Loves Of Duane Vorhees, Heave, Gift: God Runs Through All These Rooms, And Memories Are Linked Like Oases.

 

The Nature Strikes Back

 

Carbon plutocrats

poison the planet

with their noxious plants.

 

To uproot their briars

Nature prepares her seeds.

First will come the fire,

followed by the freeze.

 

The focus of the sun

will emblaze to ash

the factories,

refineries.

 

The revenge of the wind

extracted against

the coal smokestacks

and the oil rigs.

 

The purging of the rain

clears away the trash--

the factories, refineries,

the coal smokestacks,

and the oil rigs.

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Stephen Cole (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Stephen Cole was born in Los Angeles California near the end of the Second World War. He was raised in the Hill Country of Northeast Mississippi and in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. He currently lives in Kansas City, Kansas, USA. He was a statistician by profession, and a senior executive in marketing statistics for a major corporation which shall remain nameless, albeit his true passion has always been philosophy and poetry and in trying to establish a connection in between.

 

The capital investments

The ancient pig blood
And the swine song liturgy,
Someone’s heresy,
Swilling the gut shellfish
—The kosher ones—as
The coyote dances away from the harvest
At the Pacific shore—by the collection
Of the birth pools in the shallows,
The Campsites
And stone tools
Teaching on prehistory’s failure
At the end of all ancient schools.

Therefore, we discover
Too late the golden rule
That was too hard for us to take
Without an object lesson
To replenish nothing in us,
Oh vacuous ‘I’
At the bone level
Of flesh on the spool.
And so on to the fire circles
Where religions are justified
To assure our native criminality
By the theft of natures low hanging jewels
For extravagance in Baal’s greed
(False or true).

Hard to find yourself in the river blood
And not think it is mud
Taken from the memory
Of generations of species depletion.
It is the end of nature
Fueled our nations of taking
In the lying conceit
That you not lose.
 Nature will win
As it sweeps bear the landscape
Of fragmented love
Along with your name
With no warning to others
As to why you are destroyed now
When you have forgotten
The rugged way you came.

There is no peasant tradition
No treaty, no rendition
To see you through
 And
The poison seeps through your guilt
And pours out the unconcern
As punishment drips from open sores.

When all the resources are finally tapped out
And cannot be replenished
At your hand,
Retribution comes knocking
And chokes you
On all your penurious doubts.

 

 

Carrion voices on the Tombigbee

According to the unfair argument,
The ‘coffin maker’ is dead.
The river is dead
And we killed the river,—once
And for all, all for one,
A terrible god, to be respected—
Now, a canal playground
For discarded beer cans.

Death came handily
By the rites of biblical dictation
In the murderous dominion
Of privileged eminent domain.
Knowing this played very little
In the evidentiary kennels of dogs bones
You see left over to marvel
On how thorough is the disappearance.

All the gods are boxed up
And go at a price: a
Set of two for ten
At a discount
And though barely worth unwrapping
For a philosophical viewing,
It is said it is never true
And we know that to be true.

This equity transfer in the kudzu
Is impenetrable
And traps the sacred bovine
Where they eat themselves to death
For the advantage of no one.

Sweet williams,
And the Old Man’s Beard
Crowd the waterway
In memory of what was once
The flood of nature
In full consciousness. Now
Given that God
And nature are in cahoots,
We’re going to have to work it out for ourselves.

Now we must learn a new language
To hide the painfully extended events
In the saplings pines
And the dogwoods, looking
For the preferred words
In today’s execution of tomorrow.

Can it possibly be this sad
When it is dead and barren
So no one hears the death laugh
In the revenge of weather?

 Yes

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Santosh Bakaya (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Santosh Bakaya

Award winning poet, novelist, biographer, TEDx Speaker, acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu, Dr. Santosh Bakaya’s twenty three books encompass multiple genres. Reuel International Awardee [Poetry, 2014], Setu International Awardee for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’, 2018 [Pittsburgh, USA], WE EUNICE DE SOUZA [WE Literary Community, 2023], for ‘rich and diverse contribution to Poetry, literature and Learning’, she runs a very popular column, Morning Meanderings [Learning and Creativity. Com.]

Her collaborative e- books [Blue Pencil] Vodka by the Volga [With Dr. Ampat Koshy, 2020, From Princep Ghat to Peer Panjal [With Gopal Lahiri, 2021] are # 1 Amazon bestsellers.

Recently published: What is the Meter of the Dictionary? [AuthorsPress. 2022] The Catnama [With Dr. Sunil Sharma, AuthorsPress, 2023]

For Better or Verse [With Ramendra Kumar and Dr. Ampat Koshy, AuthorsPress, 2023]

 

Ecstasy 

Through my meshed window, I see a host of yellow flowers.
Wild. Free. Lissome. Graceful.
A wholeness seeps into me as I feel their joyous vibrations.
The dew- drenched flowers sway
in sun -swathed, limpid ecstasy.
The leaves of the nearby tree, beckon me in joy.
Oh boy! I fling my window open and lo!
I see a bird looking right at me.
Merrily perched atop a blooming palash tree.
 
A chunk of the aquamarine sky creeps into the room.
For a few minutes, it sits on the edge of the window,
and hastens back.
An amber morning light fills the room.
With one glance of the sun, I am entranced.

Joy in the morning, joy at noon.
Joy at dusk, joy at night. A boon!
Nature morphs my heart into a helium balloon,
swooning to a loony tune.

 

 

 

The Cottage near the Lidder River

One morning, as I stood near the windowed nook,
 of the cottage, overlooking the Lidder River,
I glimpsed a fedora hat and a glass of ginger beer on a table.

 
My love-besotted quill yearned to pen a love duet
sung by the fedora hat and that glass of beer.
Long forgotten cornfields flashed in memory.
 I saw a scarecrow standing upright,
donning a fedora hat in that cornfield.
 A tiny wren hopping on to the hat,
clutching the notes of an unsung song in its beak.

At night, a shivery draft slithered in
from the casement window.
The cold air blew right in.
I needed no ginger beer or any other libation
to ward off the cold.
 Life for me has always been a massive keg,
meant for celebration.

Not for me the ‘still hearth,’
or the insane rat race,
hoarding, sleeping and greedily feeding.
Dashing- Clashing- bashing- slashing.
But, still, I plod forth.
 “I cannot rest from travel: I
will drink
Life to the lees:”* as the poet said,
leaving not a dreg in the keg,
 inhaling the fragrance of a thousand flowers,
 and elegant dreams hanging from bowers.

 
 I know I will always be ‘roaming with a hungry heart’*
through “scudding drifts” and drunken delight,
till something upsets my apple cart.
On an eternal quest, ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’.*
Beholden to bounteous nature and its edifying signature.

*Italicized words from Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses written in 1833 and published in 1842.

 

 

The Glint of Gratitude

 I saw myself perched on a boulder, on the seashore
and there was sudden magic,
before my very eyes.
I had morphed into a mermaid
swirling, twirling on a cresting wave.
Real, surreal and fantasy merged.
I broke into a jig.
Dancing
 prancing.
Dancing
 Prancing 

The gulls overhead broke into a crescendo,
in avian glee. Did they like my dance?
But in their squawks, I read, 

Save her
save her
Save her
save her 

I watched, aghast.
In the distance, a mother Golden Oriole
was hovering around a pine tree,
letting out anguished chirps.
I jumped down from the boulder,
and swam to the shore, racing toward the pine tree.

 A Golden Oriole chick had fallen from its nest.
I bent down and peered closer. It was still breathing.
Tenderly picking that fistful of gold, I slithered up the tree,
 like those days of yore.
 I put it back in the nest, and broke into a jig.
Dancing
 prancing.
Dancing
 Prancing
Dancing
 prancing.
Dancing
 Prancing 

And the Golden Oriole danced too.
With some brilliant new steps. 

What was that glint in the eyes of the Golden Oriole?
A drop of golden sun? Or a hint of gratitude?

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Amit Shankar Saha (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Amit Shankar Saha

Amit Shankar Saha is the author of three collections of poems titled Balconies of Time, Fugitive Words, and Illicit Poems. He has also published a collection of essays titled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Essayist. He is the Editor-in-Chief of EKL Review. He has a PhD in English from Calcutta University and teaches at Seacom Skills University. His website is www.amitshankarsaha.com

 

Ecology of Love

 

We were born separated

by the measure of time and space

like a bioregion divided

by political boundaries.

 

We grew up as two countries

competing to increase

our carbon footprints

although our climate was one.

 

But fossil-fuelled love combusts

and become just carbon dust.

This burnt world is an infatuation,

it has not progressed underneath.

 

Love maybe as naked as nature

and as still as the trees.

You may not see it progress

Although its roots run deep.

 

 

Silence of the Sleet

 

What if the world attains dystopia

and we are the last beings alive?

You work on your singularity somewhere,

I on mine somewhere else,

trying to discover each other

over the remnants of ether,

like a blind man trying to see

something beautiful but too far to touch.

 

We communicate with our devices

that elude us from giving our locations,

we crisscross deserts of ice

and sail through the seas of sands

as time like drops drip from the clock

while we quest to someday meet,

fully knowing that we are the last beings alive

and the next is the silence of the sleet.

 

 

The World of Vestigial Organs

 

The ears of the sky

convalescent in thunder

can't hear your words.

 

The skin of inhibition

covering the rains

can't feel your touch.

 

The eyes of electric

coursing in the wind

can't see your face.

 

The nose of the night

chilling in the air

can't breathe your breath.

 

The tongue of the

corpulent footpath

can't taste your footsteps.

 

Love is a cyborg

in a world of organs

turning vestigial.

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth was raised and educated in Germany, subsequently living in France for a number of years. She then moved to Manhattan, where she resided in Greenwich Village. She now lives in Ridgefield, WA.

 

Once a staff reporter for a German travel magazine, researcher and reviewer for the German Tourist Bureau, Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth now writes poetry and short stories. Her second collection of poetry “Shouts, Whispers and other noises” was published in March of 2023.

 

Presage

 

We waited anxiously for summer.

Spring was not enough to satisfy

The longing for sun on our skin.

 

Now sun, too much, too bright, relentless.

Not a whisper of cloud, not a breeze,

No storm gathering with refreshing rain.

 

The river has nothing left but dry stones.

Blight has befallen the crops, they come to waste.

Wells run dry.

 

We stay inside. Heat seeped into walls,

Sucks the last cool from stone floors.

Fields are parched, gardens wilted.

 

Chimneys spew acrid fumes,

Rain forests die in slash/burn,

Ships plow the seas through

Fields of plastic trash,

Tourists watch glaciers calf, disappear,

Drinks in hand, from decks

Of behemoth vessels.

Walking is a sport we do not indulge

As a means of transportation.

Remedies to stop the rape of the earth

Are mere suggestions.

It is not a question of if,

But a matter of when we breach 1.5C

The tipping point to doom.

 

And again and again

The sun sets in molten gold.

Glorious to behold. Oblivious to our doing.

 

 

Cause Celebre

 

“Nana, this is serious” he said,

with a worried old man’s look

on his college kid face.

She smiled inwardly.

Every generation has its Cause Celebre.

She remembered protesting the war.

He talked weather, global warming, climate change.

He said: “when the dominoes start falling,

They will fall fast and hard”.

With his fatalistic bend envisioning doomsday.

 

When the sea claimed the stretch of garden

Between the house and the cliff’s edge,

She grew concerned.

When the well ran low for 2 summers

She worried.

And when the fires turned the hills

Into patches of crumbling dirt,

She believed.

 

The ground shudders under the assault of the sea.

Waves pounding the bluff

Spill over the edge.

Shingles fly,

Windows explode.

The house moans, shifts into

A surreal vision of cubistic rubble,

Slides over the edge.

A life’s dream dissipated

The dominoes have started to fall.

 

 

 

Unopened

 

Like a cheap gadget, tightly wrapped

in a plastic shell, the box is unopened.

It does not hold

much of a threat to begin with.

It’s more like a joke that got tired.

 

She sees the slash burn of virgin forests,

poisoned water, famine, genocide,

the river Styx a maelstrom of the dead.

Miasma unchecked.

A sinkhole turns into Abyss.

 

A new race, homo noxious, has risen,

dances around a bloated golden calf

to artless rhythms.

Pale moon rises above the horror,

the bloody scenes of their making.

 

No, it’s not her doing.

The box never opened.

Pandora falls into exhausted sleep.

She dreams of owls,

their wings a gentle whisper.

 

 

Nursery Rhyme

 

 

Black silhouettes in shadow boxes sway,

think of escape.

Marionettes, strings broken,

lifeless puppets,

think of freedom.

Unarmed tin soldiers

ride headless rocking horses.

The music box skips every other note.

 

The children have left a long time ago.

 

Silhouettes in black limousines,

bloated with power,

pull strings of marionettes

in a dance macabre.

Soldiers die in foreign places.

Headless horses of the apocalypse

trample freedom

to the tune of greed.

 

The children have grown up.

 

 

 

Through A Lens Sharply

 

Colors bright under the midday sun,

Green, red, orange, yellow,

And a touch of blue.

A perfect picture. A perfect angle.

 

Tribal cloth draped around her

Against a bright blue sky,

Billows in the breeze which carries sand

over the parched expanse that is her life.

 

She sings softly, swaying,

Waving away flies

On the face

Of her starving child.

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

Deepak K Choudhary

Deepak K. Choudhary is a Delhi-based writer, editor and translator. A multilingual writer, he has penned poems and prose pieces in English, Hindi and his mother tongue Maithili. His poems have featured in some widely known journals and magazines such as The South Asian Ensemble, Chrysanthemum Chronicles, Vigil Pub Magazine, Indian Literature, Samakaleen Bharatiya Sahitya, Indian Africanist, etc. His two poetry books (solo collections) published so far are titled BIRDS LIKE US and THE CITY NEVER SLEEPS. His translation of a collection of Hindi poems titled LIKHA NAHI EK SHABD (originally penned by Amit Kumar Malla) was published as NOT A WORD WAS WRITTEN by Zorba Books in 2017. For his blogs and social media posts, he occasionally uses the pen-name Deepak Darshak.

 

No One Knew The Address Of The Monsoon

 

Before the clouds came

Smiling at a thousand and one

Starving holes in earth’s belly,

They had got riddles growing

Inside their bodies and hearts,

Outweighing their ossified yearnings,

Turning them steadily into wilds of

Their own existence

 

They were questions that

Crept and crawled and shuffled

Inside their premises like apparitions,

Tied to an endless wait for

The magical key to reach from the hills

And free them

 

In the dead of the night,

Someone in some corner of

The world would cry and

Everyone everywhere

Would start feeling emptiness

In their bellies and

Thorns in their minds,

No one knew the address of

Monsoon and they knew

They could only hope for careless,

Imprecise knocks on the door

To keep them moving and

Running rather indifferently into

One another

 

On that night,

When the earth was still burning

And the barns were sleeping

Like deserted isles,

When silos had gone

Grainless to the bottom,

The sky mellowed its wings to

Placate the terrestrials caged in

Their dry persistence that had them forget

Their faces and names

 

After nine scores and five,

I may be too old perhaps to recall

Much of what I have lived through,

But believe me,

I still remember the little urchin

And his ailing mother in a straw hut

Who had outlived the ordeal

When the earth saw the rains

 

 

Living By A River    

 

Living by a river is

Like reading a book of poems

Penned by a bunch of

Anonymous hands frozen deep

Under multiple layers of

Time

 

It’s a like a journey through

Countless cantos

Etched on the terrains of

Undulating topographies---

Deep and shallow,

Straight and curved,

Quiet and vocal,

Dry and watery,

Clean and mossy,

Still and moving,

White, blue, green, black,

With their own beginnings

And ends, albeit none

Bearing the stamp of the first

Or the last one

 

Being with a river is

Quite like fantasizing

A page in a book

Designed with a secret door

Showcasing little gnomes,

Goblins, imps and nymphs,

Who change their shades

In turns, throwing surprises

With an efflorescent bricolage

 

It’s about going through

A bottomless fantasy,

Speaking to the chest of

An unbreakable, asymmetrical calm,

And wondering why

We never thought of

Walking down the lonely road

That passes through its

Inconstant belly?

 

Living by a river

Is quite like living      

A mystery,

With multiple latent depths,

Tempting prospects,

Sleek longings to discover

Narratives of belonging

In the everlasting flow of

A sequestered history

 

 

Doves In My Dream

 

Doves are missing

From the map of the day

 

I keep looking for them

Here and there, in parks and bushes,

In streets and boulevards,

On my house’s roof,

In farms

 

Invisible, light-footed,

They visit me sometimes

In the undisturbed locations of

My dreams,

When the world sleeps

And silence reigns our thoughts

 

They come

To tell me that

Their songs have been stolen

And their nests have been sold

To fill in the bellies of

Wanton greed

 

They promise that

They will come back again

With longer beaks,

Bigger talons,

Stronger wings

To protect their nests

Against the army of demons

 

 

FEAR

 

“Everything sinks here--

 Livestock, crops, children,

 Men and women, houses,

 Trees and barns,

 Hopes, prayers, smiles...”

 Mother informs

Calling from my village,

 

“Son! There will be no festival

This time,

The temple of the Goddess

Will remain submerged

In dark waters,

Waiting in hapless silence

For the dying of

The inclement downpour

And for the angry waves of

The malevolent Kosi to recede...

 

 “But don’t worry,

We will survive again

As we have done before

The countless assaults of nature

So far...”

 

 A tremble in her voice

Towards the end

Leaves me scared, tongue-tied,

As I fear the collapse of

The oldest pillars of

Our house

---

Setu, July 2023 :: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice