Four Poems
Painting: paintingvalley.com
By Suhit Kelkar
I am the rain
Last year’s rain
is this year’s rain,
more soiled, dented and cracked,
the same, falling again.
All is one with me,
and I am part of everything.
I am the rain.
So I’m also the poison
in each drop that taints
the earth’s impulse
to breed and kill,
to foster and orphan,
to germinate and decompose.
I am that poisoned impulse
to give birth.
I am what is born,
sometimes misshapen,
sometimes whole,
always suffering.
I am the craving that burns.
I am what stokes craving.
Moved by compulsion
I am the corded arm that curls
its fingers around the stout handle.
I am the handle.
I am the hand that swings the axe,
I am the forest that is felled,
tree by tree by tree by tree
by tree by tree by tree by tree
by tree by tree by tree by tree
by tree by tree by tree.
I am each tree.
I am the last branch
that crashes on bare earth.
I am the orang utan on it.
After the branch falls,
after the orang utan dies,
I will be what laments
the greatest loss of all,
the loss of me.
***
A woman speaks to an unborn child
I must prostrate in front of you,
refusing you a rebirth,
damming love
before it slakes your thirst,
thwarting your entry
in this world that hurtles
towards death by heatstroke
and salty flood.
At your silent shrieking
to be born,
I point my bony finger
at some other womb.
Yet I cannot let you
leave without a gift.
If you must be born to someone
else, take this advice.
I have not followed it.
Perhaps you will.
Then these words
will be my legacy.
The changes in seasons,
the cycle of day and night,
birth, growth, shrivelling, death,
these are the movements
of a snake to its hole.
Chase him and you won’t catch him.
Ignore him and he will stay.
Entice him with your breath
and he will approach you.
Distract him and catch him
for a moment,
stroke his glossy scales,
see his grin through
which a forked tongue blinks,
feel his life,
be one with him.
Remember this moment.
Wear it like a quilt
and perhaps you will find
equanimity
if we are unable to stop
the end of the world,
and the snake turns
into a necklace
of vertebrae worn
by the desert.
***
The ghost of guilt jeers at humanity
Unscrew your eyes
and pocket them;
peel off your ears.
Butterfly-wise, they flit
away. Uproot your tongue
and toss it aside like a snail.
Still you’ll feel
the onset of night,
the quailing river,
the moon a coin of alms
tossed in the holed sheet
that is the night sky,
and, leaning against a tree trunk,
little old me,
with my disappointed look,
and a list of your crimes.
***
The asura speaks of Prajapati
Yearning to give birth,
after he had gaped wide
and spewed forth the gods,
he wove us with his breath.
We’d barely been born, when
an omen crippled our fates.
At the instant of our birth,
he saw darkness swirl
in front of his eyes. He felt
disgust at our skins
as dark as night and tough as hide,
and our features ripe with horn and fang.
He must’ve sneered as we burrowed earth
in search of a home, for our brothers
the gods had taken over the sky.
And so he dubbed us evil,
for light he thought good
and dark bad, on a whim.
What fault of ours his hallucinations
when he willed us from his self?
What crime our pelts?
Why did he think we were born bad?
Why did he disown us,
and love only the gods?
As he was our maker,
we were grateful to
him for our birth.
We loved him.
Dubbed villains,
we lived up to his view,
our father who made us
hate ourselves
and those born to us.
Bio:
Suhit Kelkar‘s poetry has been published or is appearing in Vayavya, Elsewhere Lit, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Tiger Moth Review, Sunflower Collective, The Charles River Journal, and others. His chapbook, The Centaur Chronicles came out last year. It explores alienation and discrimination through a creature found in Greek mythology, the centaur.
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One Response to “Four Poems”
All your poems are written with great care, a topical bent that doesn’t call attention to itself and the lucidity of your vision shines in all four poems. They are all symptomatic of the cynical earth we have inherited and thus feel true to the pulse of our present selves.