Vanishing Words: Poems. Sukrita Paul Kumar. Hawakal Publishers.15 January 2022. 80 pages
Sukrita
PREFACE
Why would the tiger of silence not leave
any pug marks behind in the forest of words?
My poems emerge while searching for these
pug marks amid the cacophony around,
picking words that cancel all noise in themselves,
such that pulsate in echoes of meaning and then
vanish into colourless space—
past sound beyond meaning.
**
High and Low
Once again
That language
of silence
of dumbness
Bridges weighed
Under…
*
Between the moon
And the sun
Like the earth
I am yet again
between
rising and setting
*
Big wholesome moon
This month at dawn
looking the sun
In the eye
Defiant
***
Birthing
On the gritty path
between nowhere and somewhere
and back again to nowhere
Buddha stood one-legged
Pinpricks and shingle
On the oblique crossroads
Where visible and invisible roads
Plummeted
Helmets and boots
Hands in white gloves, Buddha
Know-all of paths and tracks
Bequeaths no directions
The un-performing traffic cop
No colours to put on the palette
No notes to strike on the accordion;
Choices
Stretched between
logic and madness
When the mind is made up
Begins yet another journey
of torment
Gut wrenching pains in labour
Before the musical notes trigger
from the free metal reeds
folding bellows into silence
woolly cotton balls in thin air
Strokes of brush
On the blank canvas
Fill the void
With a rainbow that speaks
Of rain and sunshine
hand in hand
***
NAKED KAILASH
Betwixt Himalayan peaks
and human spirits
sometimes
masses of black shadows
and crows
lie trapped
in lingering pauses;
In the stillness
and the motion
of fluttering wings
waves of warmth
caress the slopes
and melt the snows
into cheerful apologies
for stripping the sages
the old mountains
wearing the
chilled privacy
of
white robes.
***
WITH MY CHINAR AGAIN
O Chinar,
In some autumn, in some century in the past
When your leaves abandoned you
When all your colours merged into
the white of mountain snow
you and I
we got together …
Winter after winter did we travel
Seeds, saplings, roots
through strands of time,
strips of desert lands
From Kashmir of peace, of strife
Even through savannah grasslands of Africa
On the move…
homeland to homeland
Till we spread and reached
the paintings on the walls of Ajanta
In this life
when we were born anew
Partition after Partition
We remained in exile
In Africa … we met
Hush! Their majesties the lions
their golden manes
gathering near the pond,
jambo rafiki
They roar in one voice
Sounds rolling
into the lap of Mount Kenya
Chilled in its elegant white cap
O Chinar,
You change colours
Shed your leaves again, yet again
to be ready
for life after life,
death after death
*******
Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet and critic, was born and brought up in Kenya. She held the prestigious Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at Delhi University.
Sukrita in The Beacon
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