‘This life is all that we have’: Four Poems by Amit Shankar Saha
Photo: Karan Madhok
‘The city awakes / / from the depths of sleep / and beyond the walls / their minds are released / from quarantine.’
Lockdown
A virus steals a migrant’s yell
into a long summer
sun unabsorbed.
Chaitra descends into darkness.
He curls inside the sound
of an alarm.
His body, a matter punctured
by a portal called life,
fills up at death.
A closed gateway for time and space
into a universe
of anti-life.
*
The Wall
Two souls sleep their nights
out on the footpath
under a building.
Their dreams rise up,
reaches the fourth floor
window of blue night lamps
to meet with the dreams
of sleeping highrisers.
A dog yelps somewhere,
a bread van passes
and a flag flutters.
The city awakes
from the depths of sleep
and beyond the walls
their minds are released
from quarantine.
But between the walls
too strait is the gate.
How to squeeze in
their dreams debate.
*
A Packaged Drinking Water Bottle
We two sat starting
at each other...
this empty bottle
and my vacant mind.
Sometime in the near past
it got emptied of all water
just like my mind got
exhausted of its thoughts.
We stared long at each
other in the afternoon
of ennui and boredom
devoid of any frolicsome
wind and then I noticed
the fine print
on the packaging -
"Purity Guaranteed".
*
A Glimpse of Afterlife
You wrote something about afterlife.
What if there is no afterlife?
This life is all that we have...
We can do candle light vigil for those who died.
We can donate blood for those who survived.
And we can, perhaps, write poetry
to bring in social change and hope
for, after all, an afterlife.
***
Amit Shankar Saha is a widely-published award-winning poet and short story writer. He has won the Poiesis Award for Excellence in Literature, Wordweavers Prize (both for poetry and short story), Nissim International Runner-up Prize for Poetry, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize. His works have been included in Best Indian Poetry 2018 anthology. His poetry collections include Balconies of Time and Fugitive Words. He has co-edited a collection of short stories titled Dynami Zois. Saha teaches in the English Department of Seacom Skills University. He is the co-founder of Rhythm Divine Poets. You can follow him on his website or on Instagram: @amitshankarsaha.
