Gopal Lahiri

Reality

It’s black, it’s like a film, it’s slippery oil slick
floating on the water with a vein of scarlet
washing the shore.

Plastic bags those twists and turns
swirl in a fervour, in the swell of the sea.

I try to hold but slips through my fingers,
meanwhile the grey clouds and flakes of rain
move across the landscapes.

But the wild geese are heading home again
mottled light hushes this climate change.

Fish, snail, gastropod: all will vanish one day
sharp edges of grief is echoing and echoing.

Don’t think this is morbid- the toxic death,
Anthropocene- it’s just reality even if we deny.

Glassy Glaze

I look up and it’s only the bronze sky, a hollow
dream of seedless earth, no tiny blossoms,

I’m without words, the ground is as hard as
flint, the forests wreath in fire and blaze.

Misery grows with the needles of dry earth
and we all melt away into the oblivion.

I have never seen a blue angel, the soft silky thread
on cenotaphs, the eagles now kill the unhatched eggs.

Time will brim over our butcher’s palms and 
becomes perhaps forever try to pass hard,

They say our grief is like the moss stich,
dying is the silent confirmation message.

I know about this dream that has nothing
but glassy gaze and blood on its mind.

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