‘Extinction is blood on my hands’: Vinita Agrawal’s poems about our disappearing natural wealth

Himalayan Trek

In the rhododendron lanes
my heavy flesh disintegrates
becomes empty as air.
A sliver of dry skin nailed to the door
of an emaciated past.

Silence is a balm
to your metal-slapping-metal absence.
Easy to slit the sternum
of stoic mountains with a gaze.
Difficult to stitch the gaping wound.
I want to know that I died really well.

In sunflowers we see the sun
in home, burdens
in death, preparedness
Flaky waxy rivulets of roads
lead to annatto loneliness,
Nothing else.
Country roads take me home, Denver sang.

In the Himalayas,
rice and honour seem to be one.
Honey pledges itself
to the warm thick fingers of seekers.
Nights are coolants
poured into twice withered, tired
calves, ankles, feet.
When I travel, I meet myself.

Inside lakes and in rivers,
rounded stones bathe
all life long.
Drenched in crystal clear water
three sixty five days, year after year.
My thirst, so thirsty,
that I wish to become them.
Feeling nothing but the rush of water.
How nice to be a stone.

Last Call of the Kuai’i o’ o’

it is late evening
and the last kuai’i o’ o’
is calling out to its mate from a lapalapa tree
sweet ringlets of flute-like sound
honeyed, skipping octaves
onomatopoeic as his name

he is calling for a mate who will never come
even though his song sugars
every bark, branch, twig, leaf in the forest
his call
ricochets off his searching yellow irises
echoes through empty nest cavities

last is a strange word;
stripping away a species
of existence.
engulfing the remaining one
into a dense grey mist
of broken-hearted silence.

Forgive Me, Amur

They call you the Amur leopard.
I call you the disappearing one.

Solitary like a yogi
nimble and strong
hunting like an arrow
jumping over ravines like the wind
fast as lightning
but not fast enough –
you couldn’t get away from...

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