The Weight Of Elsewhere | Poem

Shantashree Mohanty's poem on how the world keeps moving even amidst immense grief

Illustration
Illustration Photo: Anupriya Yoga
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Morning slips through my sheer curtains,

a fraud bearing light, peeling back its greys & azure,

My blanket’s been hogged, the alarms’ abuzz;

I pour the songs of my kettle into a mug

and then, sweep my way

through shimmering, slippery perspectives of being.

Elsewhere,

Cinders drown in the black flood of oblivion.

The newspaper screams with a sharp edge.

Each headline splinters.

Each image a combustion.

Wars. Displacement. Hunger.

Names dissolving into numbers,

Numbers dissolving into dust.

But I’m still here…

The ordinary chattering of a day

growing in the background;

My son’s laughter as he cuddle-wrestles with his dad

The sound of conch shells from the temple nearby.

Is this delight a betrayal?

To breathe, to love, to hope?

Somewhere a mother,

builds a cradle from rubble,

A father waits in line for bread.

Way past the sirens, a defiant nurse,

whispers a prayer to the wind,

beneath the weight

of a razing hospital roof.

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