Poems of Loss
By Rashme Sehgal
The Crying Himalayas -Can you Feel Their Pain?
I want to speak to you about our mountains
Are you listening?
The snows that shone so brightly
Under the still, starry nights
Have melted,
Can you see this, are you listening?
The bare rocks stand tall and naked
Like the shrunken visage of a dead tree,
You can see their veins,
And feel their pain,
Echoing through the night sky,
A dark sky aflame with stars,
Are you listening
Can you feel their pain?
The light from the sky is no longer reflected
On snow- covered flanks,
The valleys stand treeless,
Rich wates, once home to fish and fowl,
No longer race through the ravines
Their beds have gone dry.
The mountains no longer echo the song of the soul,
A song of solitude, a song of wisdom,
Are you listening,
Can you feel their pain?
**
The Forests Are On Fire
The forests are on fire
See the flames rise
To touch the skies
Cover the crests of mountains
Melt these everlasting snows into ash.
**
Our Shrunken Glaciers
The contours of the mountains have changed
Their majestic forms have shrunk
As have the snows, sadly all melted,
Leaving a shrunken glacier behind,
Wrapped in an inner turbulence
Of destitution and hate.
**
A Leitmotif of our Times
Will these contours of inner light
Remove this all- pervasive darkness
A leitmotif of our times
Water for water
Stone for stone
Tree for flame
Extinguishing the bright passage of our days
Engulfing us into a whirlpool of burning fire.
**
Disappearing Forests
Sentinels of green
Dappled in beauty
Will the red crested bulbul
Warbling through this architecture of green
Lose its song?
Its home destroyed,
Axed, rendered limbless,
Will the wind no longer carry
This soft timbre
Will its song no longer resound through the hills
Echoing the music of our dreams.
**
Trampled Dreams
Let our songs reflect our tears
Our inner anguish
Our trampled dreams,
One day this song will reach the sky,
This mantle of blue
Will capture its music
Adorn its firmament
With the sound of our heartbeats.
**
Allow These Bodies…
Allow these bodies to pile one upon another,
Press hard in all their dimensions
Will these strange creatures
Draw comfort from one another
Or will their blood flow and intertwine
To start a new cleansing,
Always, this hate-filled warfare will continue,
The vacillating heart will stop beating
And the bodies will keep piling
Through these deep nights,
Overwhelmed by impalpable winds
And the destitution of our wrecked spirits.
*
Silences
The deep silence of the hills
Has been destroyed
Lost in a dance of never- ending greed
Where are the Siddhas
The compassionate ones
The strength of their meditation
Alone can reverse this tide of desolation
Mountains blown apart like sawdust
Rivers losing their inner strength
The dominion of our trees
No longer breathe with the empire of the sunlight
Blow by blow
We are being ground into a wasteland of desolation
Bring us back O mighty spirit
To a land of unceasing light.
**
Ganeshpuri
I know you Ganeshpuri
I know you only too well
With your decapitated mountains
Your fast disappearing forests,
The Tansa river is all I have left to hold on to,
Not the temples,
Not Bhadrakali,
Not the flower seller or the sulphur springs,
I need those sparkling waters,
They remain my only hope,
Those mighty waters will alone
Bring back those dense forests
Through which once tigers roamed,
Drawn by the destiny of the river
The cry of the wild pheasant will resound again,
Tall grasses will grow along its edges
The rustling of these leaves
Will echo through the day
As will the cry of the birds
Stalking for fish along these moving waters.
**
The Political Bandwagon
A bag of grain
Dispatched every week
Into these countless hovels
Allows me to assert my suzerainty
Unto death
The perils of having lost our future
For a fistful of grain,
Forgetting all the while,
A fistful of salt gave us our freedom,
This one bag of grain
Has allowed us to become enslaved again?
*
A sword has been unsheathed
The dogs of war let loose,
Where will you carry this loot
Which palace is there left to embellish?
The nation has been taken to the gallows
Where every day,
The air is embellished with a fresh poison.
**
This path leads us upwards
To a marble pedestal
On which the mighty leader stands
When he speaks,
The earth trembles,
No wonder our mountains are disintegrating,
Stone for stone
Mud for mud
Hovel for one more hovel.
**
I revere the forests
That came up to our doorsteps
These have long disappeared
As have the grasslands,
The lotus ponds have dried up,
The hunters with their bows and arrows
No longer criss-cross these grasslands
Befriend the desert
Our new home
This is the legacy
We will bequeath to our children.
**
( Rashme Sehgal is aa senior journalist, author and poetess.)
