A Hymn to Welcome the Apocalypse (to be sung to the tune of your favourite Rabindrasangeet)
What a pleasure it is to be alive
To breathe this smoky breath of industrious humanity
To hear the gurgle of the drowning polar bears
To taste the nutritious microplastics
That are enough to nourish this God-gifted body,
To feel against the skin- the miraculous rays of the Sun that petty Ozone
Would have never let through.
To see the death God promised upon us, a death in fire,
Never a second time in flood.
Send the four horsemen
On horses whose ribs can be counted through their gray skins,
Or send fiery Kalki (a horseman too)
To burn us all,
For salvation, of course-
So that we may eternally rest
And sing the praise of God
(And sing the praise of God)
(And sing the praise of God)
Restored to Eden,
Beside our Saviour,
Leaving behind the burning (burning) (burning) Earth.
God save us all!
Tiresias Being Sarcastic
The sun rises in the east,
And sets in the west—
This, they say, is known.
One of those universal truths
That nettled you during grammar school.
Who knows where it will set when all’s ablaze
Or all’s afloat,
It's all the same to the blind clairvoyant.
When the earth runs dry of oil,
Hollow of coal,
No loud smelly frack towns to soothe us back to sleep:
We will be survived by crabs,
Subdermal creatures, less body more claw,
Pinch, pinch, pinch-
Clickity-clackity they’ll scurry on the marble floors of Rome.
With water in my lungs,
I imagine,
It would be hard to protest.
Pousali Bhar
Pousali Bhar has completed her Bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of Calcutta and is currently pursuing her Master’s in English Literature at Jadavpur University. She is interested in popular culture, ecocriticism and ecofeminism, postcolonialism, and diaspora studies. Besides academics, Bhar is a trained painter and an aspiring poet. Her poems have been published in various anthologies and poetry journals.