BY SARTHAK CHATURVEDI
Often, it baffles me, that for people
conviction is harder to announce than hope is.
But I have learnt the art of noticing;
I can announce my dreams the way I announce where a cloud is going.
I can predict in minutes when the city will wake
only to be culled again,
how I know this muddy abomination will not please mother.
Still, I say it with affection that the rain will return
to flood fields and murder crops,
to murder hopes, murder people,
to break meanders and run over houses and hills;
all for what but to brush against me.
When the winds tire of razing grazed grasses,
I will hold them in balloons that I can deform to my fill
as they lift off for the sky.
Tomorrow I will brush against the wind
the way it smirked across Krishna's forehead
to dictate the reach of his words
and bind its spirits
to let me hear the story of those that kindled with
the first organism ever, the first thought ever thought,
whether Arjun hushed with pride as he patterned the Earth in tasteless blood
and wailed to the skies to rain
and chip his red galvanized feet-
The bearer of the Gita, it is said his footsteps still bloom red
yet it’s I who’s convinced, it will rain again.