Four poems by Sunil Sharma

The sun of hope amid ruins

The morning, dipped in orange, served bright to the kids by the rising sun.

He has been doing it quietly, bringing cheer in the dismal lives— the orphans of war, in Somalia, Iraq or Afghanistan— away from the media eyes, a daily task in glum hotspots exploding in heat and splinters, watched by the international community mouthing clichés about war and peace from the UN platforms, un-heard in these wild spots run by the merchants of death, terror-financed by well-oiled machineries.

The fierce god spreads the colours on the sleepy sky, wakes up the birds;

the free birds then wake up the kids with their songs interrupted by staccato sounds and gun fire, in shelters bombed-out or dark cellars.

The early sun inspires some optimism by its sheer energy and light among the survivors

the natural hues and sky-figures lend delight to the bleak lives amid violence and mayhem, unleashed by the fanatics on both sides of the divide,

the victims grateful for living out another horrible night.

The sun-carrier

The lame kid does not give up easily his daily Sisyphean exercise of catching the shining splinters and slim illuminated shafts of a hot sun in his calloused palms,

He stands in the stinking Asian slum, where, amidst mounting garbage piles, toxic fumes, dried puke, plastic and malaria-bearing mosquitoes, the fatherless urchin growing tall and thin,

like the vertically-growing lone neem tree

planted by her sick mother, for some fresh air and shade

near their shack of tin and cardboards, on the outer margins of a booming City.

Drop

A rain drop detaches
from a shimmering rain-curtain,

in a hurry to sweep the long lonely road;
the crystal drop blends with a puddle, a mass of glowing moons,
breaking and re-forming in that tiny prison,

the agitated pool trickling down the
black- hardness of the undulating road,
like brilliant spots on a serpent’s slithering body.

Electric

The rays of a dying sun caught in the transparent
wings of a dragonfly suspended over a dull river;
a kinetic body gets dipped in gold, now
still for a moment, now in motion;
leaving a bit trace of turmeric colour against the vastness
of a glum sky waiting for some celestial light.

Sunil Sharma is Mumbai-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 18 published books: Six collections of poetry; two of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, eight joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award—2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015. Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA. For more details, please visit Sunil Sharma’s web site by clicking here…

2 Replies to “Four poems by Sunil Sharma”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.