An enigmatic, intense long poem about the various ramifications of Coronavirus, by Prof. Sonjoy, an exclusive for Different Truths.

We scared the fox out of his lair
We sent the porcupine scurrying from our fire
We danced around nature’s pyre
Reduced tracts of land to a wasted mire.

The trees crashed to the whirr of the saw, sliced, neatly logged
The perfume of flowers in the thick yellow air, smogged
And a concrete jungle loomed its shadows
Over a raped, mutilated earth,
Writhing in her death throes.

Somewhere in the dark cosmic infinitude
In deep silent solitude
A comet with flaming tail waited
As revered prophets had long back predicted
Waited, deciding the form it would choose
The time to descend
Let pandemonium loose.

From the erratic flight of the flitting bat
In eerie misty moonlight
To vampire into the bloodstream
To mutate into a microcomet
Commetting, plummeting, mucussing its ways
Down alleys of fresh airways
Blocking polluting snuffing
The coughing sneezing life out, wheezing
Creating a major traffic snarl.

Making the huge unwieldy populace
Go scurrying crashing tumbling
Home into concrete havens,
soap suds and masks of anonymity
Vain citadels that are not walled
To block out, contain the calamity
Of a comet microbe that could virus its way
Into the deepest recesses
Quickly, silently, unperceived.

Gates clanking shut, doors padlocked
“No Entry” written large all around
And everywhere.
Empty the Highways,
The arteries blocked,
Clueless the police, islanded stranded.
All roads point to the white coated corridors
Ambulanced,ventilated, masked,
Pathologically swabbed.

Vehicles garaged, factories shut,
No smoke, no fumes, no spills, no haze,
No chemicals foaming the frothy river,
No oil glazes the ocean face
No smoke spirals the skylight ways.

In slow motion nature quietly returns
Reassumes forms, prehuman, pristine.
Gingerly, the Nilgai struts the highway
A swamp deer swings an antler
As warning to a barking stray.
In the moonlight the stealthy fox
Lightfooted skips, into a trot
A peacock perches on a chimney top slot
Blue azure auburn and gold.
The sumbmarine turtle’s periscope head
moves on the waters of the shimmering pond.
Fish shoals swirl, sparrows chirrup,
The swallow returns in spiralling arcs.
Tree roots dig, seal the earth’s scars
As it heals to the dance of the light green leaves
Young and tender in the waltzing breeze.

Has the Avataar finally arrived
Its hour come around at last
Tandaving madly in our respiratory tracts
In apocalyptic calypso its price extracts
Combusting the spoils of a rotting Yuga
Scattering, blowing, sucking
Into the  Black Hole the ashes propelling?

A Prayer:

Destroyer Preserver Creator
Lead the wayward, homing soul
Back to its inheritance, its truest goal!
Teach us to live
As birds live, as trees,
As fish live, as bees
As live the pride of Lions
And the regal frugal tiger
In the grass, in the swamps
In the lush green leaves.
High up in the mountain, in the Deodar tops
The flying squirrel, from a branch
To another hops.
Teach us the hornbill’s and woodpecker’s way
As from Jamun to Mahua to Sal they sway
Teach us the belling of the Sambar stag, the Kakar’s bark
The eerie chill of a Hyena’s laugh,
Echoing in the forest’s dark.
Reconcile us back to our truest nature
Ensconced in the lap of mother Nature.

When you danced your dance of destruction
O Nataraj
Your tight snaking locks loosened
Releasing Ganga’s descending way
And in the frenzy of her freedom’s sway
She swirled in a cataract, swiftly whirling
Dancing, careening,whirlpooling.
While high up in the Himalayas,
The phallic glaciers melt
In rhythm with the annual cyclical passions
Of a Hermit God gone mad.
And the daughter of the Mountains
Widens her banks
To meet the swelling demands
Of the torrent rushing
Through the mangrove forests of her triangular Delta
Gushing
To a salty frothy consummation.
Earth springs to life,
To the rhythm of the tidal waves
The silting of the sandy banks,

A prayer goes up in unison
From Flora Fauna and Man
In a glorious dance of harmony

“Teach us to move to the rhythmic beat
Of the pulse of the earth in symphony”.

End Note:

Avataars will come, Avataars will go
Man is mankind’s biggest foe
In Epic wars and Pandemics
In Chernobyls and Epidemics
Many a lesson can be learnt
Which in peace, prosperity
Is soon unlearnt.

SO

Man is mankind’s biggest foe
Avataars will come, Avataars will go.

Photos from the Internet