Member Poem

early morning & the fog

doesn't smell like fog.

if they wake up they'll know

they might still be sleeping.

they probe the air

for yet another invisible enemy

but this time people stuck indoors

is a fear not a cure.

they hope the boy sat down first

& then gently laid his head on the rock.

they watch a policeman hurricane

his handkerchief over a woman

crumpled like a kicked tent.

two girls hold onto each other

as they tumble, wondering

what taut shape can two dots make.

a woman in a heart of blue

collapses mid-sentence,

throat sewed by gas threads.

on the footpath a red man

wants to swallow the limp body

of his girl to swaddle her

in his own shell for safekeeping

while the storm passes.

a woman falls back under the weight

of her own child in the back

of an ambulance, by its window

someone calls someone

& forgets what to say.

they wonder who they are who say

walking into death is like falling

into deep sleep.

it's all the waking up all at once.

the government has announced compensations-

one crore for the dead, ten lakhs to those

on ventilators, one lakh to the hospitalized,

ten-twenty thousand for the affected residents

& lost livestock.

the communists blame the capitalists.

nationalists blame the industrialists.

oppositions blame the ruling.

the village blames the city blames

the state blames the country blames

the world blames the volatile nature

of existence but the storm rages on

like ghosts overwriting other ghosts.

the firm says the situation is under control

& they're investigating the extent of damage.

thanks.

meanwhile, early morning, a boy walks out

thinking the sirens sound like now-now-now-now

& finds the wheels of a crashed bike

still spinning & the arms of the body under it

pointing to a rock & he staggers & his wonder

whether birds drop from the sky when they die

might just be answered & he staggers & the stars

rubber duck through foggy heavens

& he staggers & he staggers & then.
 

(I wrote this after a disastrous gas leakage occurred in Vishakapatnam, India, which killed at least 11 people, with 800 others taken to hospital. As the country is easing its restrictions, it is possible that the factory may not have followed nor had the capacity to follow the re-opening protocols. Similar cases have been reported from a paper mill in Chandigarh and a thermal power station in Neyveli.)