}} THE INFERNO FLOODS by Smita Sahay |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










THE INFERNO FLOODS by Smita Sahay

Nirjala, the coal carrier

Ashes coat mahua flowers  heavy lifting
cranes chafe the shama bird’s auspicious song.
Photosynthesis is cancelled  Vitamin D rare

till she arrives with the sun shining in her hair.
Nirjala whose name is a sacred vow renouncing
the cool relief of water  stands hip deep

in a pool thick with coal dust and miners’ sweat
but no memory of the translucence of raindrops.

*

Jharia
An Inferno where all circles of hell                                                                                                 

collapse
into the perennial protest
of shreddedearth
where fracturedelements
go unheardwhere
hills recoilonto
a heaving horizon.

*

Sinkhole

Cars, trees, dogs and people vanish
without a trace.
Whom do we grieve when there is nothing left to mourn?
Flames get hungry too
left too long to starve they cannot suppress a sudden yawn.

*

My Nirjala

gleams like the Milky Way
and unfurls somewhere behind
my lungs a deep, full raag.

I grow wings of moonlight
and nestle into the lines of her palms.

Nirjala  the river I wade into without drowning
my map to a universe not hissing steam anymore
my lucky stone tied to the wishing tree at the Kalyaneshwari temple
the birth-giver the nurturerthe silence gatherer
the uniter of elements the filler of chasms.

Nirjala  whose head on my pillow
turns my dreams into the satiated rustle of sighing trees.

My toes curl into soft warm dirt
and I splash like a child in filthy colliery water.
I hear my laughter.

*

The flood

Coal worships fire. Water gushes in canals.
Leaking perforations and flaming gashesthis is mined earth:
a dragon whose roar pours floodbreath fire.

Can people drown in a land of fire?

One day water sluices into the earth’s throat
where flames lie cauterising her wounds.

That day dancing wildly  hand in hand  theyunfurl
into this land beneath landanannihilation
that reverses the birthingof animals
turning them intofloatingfoetuses.

*

Somewhere she rests
my Nirjala
in water
water in her
rests

 

 

← Smita Sahay