‘We’ll survive somehow’: Five poems by Indian poets to ring in the new year

‘Koel’ by Eunice de Souza

Koel, stop those cries.
I can’t take it this morning.
The wood-doves join your chorus of grief.

Look! The leaves are shining green
the sky a sort of blue
there’s even a breeze from the sea.

We’ll survive somehow,
Koel, stop those cries.

‘Stay with the Song’ by Mamang Dai

The afternoon belongs to the dove
weeping for her fall from heaven.
The feast of life is laid before our eyes,
but the ticking moment
discloses nothing about time;
its footsteps, and their meaning.
Evening –
The sun goes away
carrying its quiver of arrows.
Every word we utter now is a memory
until the sun returns.
Stay with the song.

All night –
Don’t lose the chord
that binds all things together.
Rain blows down from the hills
pushed by grey clouds,
and a white, ordinary moon
suddenly draws our gaze upwards.

Daybreak –
The bright cry of the peacock.
Morning light touches the grass.
It is time to leave.
Not all the things we know will heal us.
Not all the things we fear will kill us.

‘After the End’ by Ashok Vajpeyi

After the end
we won’t sit quiet.

We’ll quarrel again,
we’ll seek again,
leap over boundaries again.

Earth water fire
wind and sky
we’ll tell them again,
Come,
give us form,
give us shape.

The same as before
the same
that the end thinks
it has erased forever.

After the end
we won’t be finished.
We’ll hover here
close to life,
blossoming like scent,
flowing like air,
gathering like memory.

In the end
we’ll evade...

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