Spring : A Wild Beast
Spring unfurls its blue ribbon.. -- Eduard Mörike
Yuyutsu Sharma
The cracked patch
of a clammy honeycomb comes
dripping out of a sobbing night
and clings to the frozen calf of my leg.
There’s a scent of spring
back again to dance in my nostrils,
its pungent air
suffused with a stinging odor
of a bonfire
of sandalwood, butter, sesame,
cinnamon and honey
aflame somewhere across
the icy rivers
of our shrunken canyons.
I leap out of the bed
and thump my foot to let it
fall off to the grassy ground,
homeless bees buzzing in slow motion
in the stabbing sunlight
of a wounded day in our boorish republic.
Don’t panic, just keep quiet,
I whisper, seeing she’s about to scream.
They
mustn’t sense our fears,
the fright to live in a plague is to suffer
the fate of a bonded sex-worker,
to endure the inevitable,
and in silence surrender to lethal
pleasure of the demented Deities.
Each moment a hazard,
each day a fresher revelation
of the master’s disregard of the corpses
piling up in newly-founded crematoriums.
I step out of the house
in the Himalayas to venture out
into our canyons aflame
from the flush of rhododendrons
tulips, primrose, cherry,
blue poppies, geraniums
and watch spring crouch
like a wild beast as it did a year ago
holding back the delight
to dance like a fat bumble bee
celebrating the arrival of
a succulent spring in our glistening valleys.
