New Poem, "Spring : A Wild Beast" by Yuyutsu Sharma

 

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.

 

 From Yuyutsu Sharma's upcoming collection, In God's Messy Workplace.