by Chitralekha Sreejai

The sun rose
On a cloudless blue sky,
Hot, seamless fire, blazing,
Sultry sweat, melting down droopy backs;
The hot wind carrying dried leaves,
Sick, withered, crumbling with grief;
The red rose by the side of the hedge,
Drooping tired, brown on the fringes;
Butterflies fainting in the daze;
The fiery sun in a relentless blaze.
The wind sweeps like a terrible gale,
Horizon, blurring in the simmering wave,
Mirages, licked away by the famished eyes,
Heat, firing out the heart from its grave,
The world, enclosed in a greenhouse,
Morbid heat radiating,
The pungent smell of the dead green corpses!

And then with her thick dark womb,
Thronging the skies in the deepest blue,
Riding over the echoes of the mourning tombs,
Calming, embalming, elating,
Rippling the sad hearts of the summer preys
With deep and curious footsteps, the rain!
A crunch on the crumbled leaves,
A medley in the hollow silence,
Drop, Drop, feeding lust, feeding love, life;
Pouring down, blinding visions!
Ripping the clouds, tearing down the heat;
Out from the spout, out of the cobwebbed eyes,
Shaking down crystals from the leaves… heart,
Dousing the steam, blurring lines, lanes
And language-clad walls!