Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
On a long Quarantined Night
Late into the night
you didn’t return
as promised;
I longed for the sound
of your footfalls
on the creaking stairs
of our house
by the raging brook
and in the early
hours of the dawn
dreamt of a lush
grape-looking
new born
lying next to me,
your present
at the dead end
of my long
quarantined night.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
I hold my breath
I hold my breath
stop my heart in a fraction
of an astral pause
and bend to the ground
to hear it
coming from afar.
***
Quarantined
in the groggy chambers
of my body
for weeks and months,
snuggled
in the sunya of my sorrows
and noxious prophesies
of an impending doom,
in the early hours
of the dawn hearing
feverish tapping
of Grandma’s twisted cane
hobbling down
the hallway
into the toilet
that seems miles away
a mini earthquake
spiraling upwards,
wrecking her nerves
shuddering her fragile frame,
and Grandpa rousing
from an apocalyptic vision
of some million cremations,
a spiky ball of phlegm rattling
in his shriveling windpipe ,
an erratic rasping
of a watery lungs
drowning every minute
in the far off hospitals
of the beloved cities
of my travels.
***
Bergamo, Milan,
boroughs of New York City,
parks of The Bronx
streets of Corona, Elmhurst
and Jackson Heights,
a fever racing along
the banks of River Seine
tossed over the patios of Cordoba,
dragging a blood-drenched line
of corpses up the slopes
of Andalusia’s olive fields
and along the Thames,
shores of Mumbai
and riverbeds of our Yamuna
desert cities of Jodhpur,
Tonk and Bhilwara.
An angry anthem of seagulls
and swallows trapped in the splintered sirens
of exhausted ambulances
scurrying along the wailing squares
that ominous pigeons
and blood thirsty phantoms
of the pandemic
have repossessed.
***
I hold my heart tight
put my long quivering ears
to the ground
to listen to a piercing bolero of joy
in the sudden silence
of earth’s astral moves
as humanity goes
hiding in the hellholes of Boccaccio’s
human comedy
shedding a sea of tears
large enough for
a million Buddhas to bathe in
and rise remorseless.
***
I hush myself up,
learn to forget my count of corpses
in the sudden blooming
of rhododendrons, poinsettias and blue mimosas
and from my Himalayan rooftop
spot a virgin vision of snow ranges
hidden for decades
beneath dusty branches
of malignant tree that
I watered most
of my early childhood.
***
I hear it,
a shrill whistle cry
of a lammergeyer,
the bone breaker,
in the peak hour
of this early spring,
a festive trilling
and the squawking of invisible angels
a rhapsody
of squint-eyed ravens,
spiny babblers
white-crested laughing thrushes,
warblers and
blood-beaked green parrots
along with a shrill
chorus of hyenas and jackals
returning home
after a hiatus of a lifetime
to bathe
in the sparkling waters
of glacier-fed rivers
beyond barricades
of the locked down
nations of the world.
The Migrant Metaphor
From my rooftop
I fear for their lives
these feral things
lying asleep for hours
as if turned into
a lump of sullen meat
crushed under
some gorilla tyres
of a wayward truck
or a supply vehicle.
Quiet
quarantined
small
smelly blurs
under empty flyovers
or vacant zebra crossings
warming their
damp lives
on the asphalt
of freshly pitched roads
for smooth
stately visits of dignitaries.
Exhausted after
restlessly sniffing for crumbs
dropped by
some wayward charity,
I see them
slumber into
a resigned voyage
to the netherworld
motionless with
the drooping inertia
not a limb moving
or an alert ear
twitching
to reassure life
unafraid of
surveillance trucks
or some emergency
ambulances hooting though
the fiendish silence
of highways that
might just crush
them into a squashed
little mound
of dead meat
shattering
their innocent,
stone soup
faith in the humanity
of this century’s
most eloquent
scoundrels.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
I sleep alone
I sleep alone in my room
a rod of brutish pain piercing
through my headpiece.
I sleep alone in the dark
not knowing how to deal with
this sudden upsurge
of an impending gloom,
a feel of being trapped
in the hands of a ruthless despot
racing over
the fields of humanity’s joy.
Three days I sleep alone
wondering if it will ever go away.
I wrap my head in a woolen scarf,
drink hot turmeric water, chew basil leaves,
recite my secret mantras that
illustrious monkey grammarian
bestowed on our ancestors.
I summon up the healing touches
of ash-smeared Naga Sadhus,
wear amulets possessing
dynamos of mysterious cures,
three-mouthed rudrakshras,
taweez with breaths of Peer Babas trapped in them.
I sprinkle water from the muddled bottles
stored in the family shrine decades after
my mother brought them
from the banks of the Ganges.
I lie down like a giant lizard curled up
in my thorny scales of a frantic throbbing
and on the third night open my eyes
and see him standing above my bedpost —
his white cotton turban shining,
his tall towering frame filling the long dalan
with the effulgence of his presence.
I present my head to him ,
“Here, Bauji, touch it, in the centre, see, see!”
so he can tousle it
and blow the sheaths of his healing breaths
from his wise lungs on it
like he did in my boyhood,
“Don’t you see it,
a tiny bump on the top, there, there!”
“It’s nothing,” he says, running his fat fingers
over my head, and announces, “You are fine, Ramji,
perhaps you hit your head
against a low ceiling somewhere.”
“You are okay,”
he pats my head again
bends to smell its olive odor
and disappears in the dark of my quarantined night.
I open my eyes, my nostrils releasing
unsullied air from the forests of rhododendrons.
Yes, yes, I speculate — Didn’t I hit my head
against the low ceiling of the attic the other day
as I went up to get old books
to read during the Lockdown?
In a second, my headpiece shoots
through the roof into the blue sky,
twirls into a parrot-green mountain,
the monsoon clouds butting against it,
brushing against its foliage with glee.
For hours, I bounced
like an orb of light in the silence
of snow glaciers
and next day woke to wander
around alpine
base-camps of delight.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
Tears, Blood and Milk
By the river edge
Sita gives birth to a baby
and waits under a tin-shed
for some thoughtful NGO
from the locked down city
to arrive, a meager prayer
from her sullen skies.
Days pass by,
her drinking water bowl
turns its color
and starts looking
like a spout of blood.
***
From the bridge,
he sees his child stuck
in an intricate
jumble of cables,
a tiny toy thing
with a tail dangling,
an unbending erect
stone thing in the shrine
he used to steal
his food from every day.
***
On the fifth
step of the stairs
to my floral rooftop
I sense a faint trace of it,
a fetid stench
of decaying flesh
a recall of a frantic rush
of the feeble creatures
as they fled
their rickety abodes
drugged from a poison
named hunger.
***
Where would they have
sought refuge, ahead of vanishing
into the cracks of humanity
before hunger’s hammer
came squashing
their feverish bodies
without a whimper
or a wail?
***
Where, I wonder,
would they have gone?
In the attics
beneath my stairs
on alters of recent riots
littered with charred bodies,
gashed garments,
knives, bullets, icons of annihilation,
flags, films, bottles,
fingernails, crosses,
crescents, tridents
and hefty books of faith
where the Lord himself
shape shifts to sleep with
the alleged enemy’s
innocent wife?
Where I wonder
would they have gone?
In the garages bulging
from the bags of my travels around
the globe researching
agendas of contempt crusading
across continents
knee-deep in the blood of the innocent
in the castles constructed
from the boorish bricks of human skulls?
***
I grope the wounded
fields of my world,
feral lives have
taken over the squares
that I once
called my own:
monkeys, bats, owls,
eagles, coyotes, vultures
and other species
seeking fresher visions of doom.
I see them scurrying over
the fields of my sleep
racing over the bridge
with their ravenous feet
running over the power cables
stretched over the emptied cities.
I see them moving
over their ariel routes
hankering
for crumbs of compassion.
One of the younger ones
tears himself away from the fold
climbs atop an electricity pole,
places his confident paws
on a live wire joint
and falls over to get
stuck in a jumble of wires.
Ravens instantly
gather overhead, raising an uproar,
nervous street dogs
circle around the pole in a lethal fury
sparks fly off
eclipsing my vision, cracking my eye glasses,
a blight of white light
white as your silvery beard,
whiter than your daily pranks
and lies you dole out every day,
whiter than the shame
of a million suns skimming
her blood that
curdles into a pool of tears
instead of milk
that could have descended
in her breasts
as she sat by the river Yamuna
miles away from her home,
rolling her baby in her agitated hands,
an object too heavy to hold
a weight heavier than the mass
of whole earth,
her tears flooded waterfalls
washing the fetid stench
of your snout stuck in Middle Ages,
singing a serf’s cry—
Podo, my baby, do not cry
Podo, my baby, hush up, or die.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
Running out of Ink
Running out of ink
like my karma to pen down
my grief as death rages
in the dank vaults of the world
and poison is sprinkled
with glee on my people
trapped in dog cages, beaten,
broken like stones in enclosed spaces
of hatred, abused and maimed
as their children cry out,
gasping for breath,
their journeys to reach distant homes
thwarted, mocked at,
their efforts to survive declared
uncouth and unconstitutional
by well-fed anchors sitting
on plush sofas
in the studios of current anarchy.
His giant potter’s wheel plops out
piles of corpses, rightful relics of a wrath.
In my dream last night
I saw a blue Mediterranean shore crop up
in my backyard, a sudden sight
of joy at this grim hour.
From my rooftop
I see crystal waves crashing against mossy walls
of my ancestral house in Punjab
where once wheat fields stretched
to the rim of summer songs
of wailing hoopoes.
Life multiplies here in my village,
even nails of the corpses flung into
the bottomless water wells
a decade before my birth
grow nonstop along with their black
shiny hair, eyelashes and long lush beards.
“Their women were so beautiful,
kohl-eyed, fair and sharp featured, houris,”
my grandma once
confided in my childhood,
“Death,” she said, “is a discarded broom
of gloom, a misshapen, pygmy slur.”
The Queen mother in her tales cried so much
when the father of my hero, the king, brought in another wife
that she lost her eyesight
from crying all the time.
And Grandpa whispered the anecdotes
of his darker times when the British ruled.
The floods swamped the entire district,
everyone waded knee-deep in the muddy waters
and corpses of the animals
came floating to our doors, instead of singing saints.
On the seventh day, he slept
in the main baithak of our house,
uttering prayers as the waters kept rising
ready to cross over our threshold
and the thunder roared
overhead all night long.
In the early hours of the dawn
he dreamt the waters rushing back
to the colossal mouth of blue-throated god,
and life resuming its normal pace.
He woke out of his creaking cot
moved out of the house to step on the ground
dry as the bones
of our ancestral spirits.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
Who saw it coming?
Who saw it coming
after a weary count of wounds
on reckless rail tracks
as sleep wrestled their feverish limbs
into an early morning sleep?
Who saw it coming
after a careful count of burnt bread
in the dark hollows
of their spent up knapsacks
on the full eclipse of a bleak night?
Who saw it coming
after miles of walking barefoot
on the flaming tongue
of the forbidden routes
laced with splintered stones
sharp enough to drill a hole
in your Krishna’s nimble sole?
Who saw it coming
severing motley threads
of their flailing breaths
under the blind stare of a merciless sun?
Who saw it coming
their meager stocks — charred chapatis,
pouches of moldy rice
sattu of seven cereals,
an ounce
of moth-eaten beaten rice
rotting onions, green chilies,
a pod or two of garlic,
and tiny pudias of sweat-soaked salt
to survive their fearful crusade?
Who saw it coming
grinding wheels of solid steel
chomping their bony frames
scattering chunks of their mutilated flesh
brittle as branches of a dead tree
their priceless gatheris hollering
million metaphors
of self, salt and salvation?
Who saw it coming
their lives splintered into multiple pieces
under the threadbare shrouds
woven from spiteful yarns of your designs
darker than the blind night of their lives
darker than the face of the burnt bread
that they had carried
to come alive out of the snare of your public lies?
Who saw it coming
tracks littered with food soaked
in their warm blood unleashed
by your churlish chants and mega-announcements?
Who saw it coming
worn-out flip-flops on the sullen tracks
staring helpless at the stunned stars
of their aggrieved souls authorizing
a final descent
into the hellholes of their ultimate sleep?
Who saw it coming?
You saw it coming,
and you, you did nothing about it.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
Yaksha Questions*
What’s heavier than earth?
The weight of sleep
on your shoulders
as you walk alone
in the night.
What’s sharper than wind?
The edges of splintered stones
on the railroad tracks
tearing through your flip-flops
on a blind night
What’s holier than the Lord?
faces of your children
asleep on your shoulders
quaking from the throes
of carrying your beloved load
nonstop on the highway
under a growling surveillance
of a ruthless sun
What’s hotter than fire?
tears streaming out of
your parents’ eyes
as they wait on a bare cot
under a leafless tree
on the edge
of a barren field
What’s saltier than the Sea?
Your drowning in the ocean
of your sweat stinging
wounds scraped by
soft-nailed supervisors
of a twisted regime
all over your famished frame
What’s arrogance?
The ability to see nothing
not even a baby slithering
through an orphaned womb
on the blazing roadside spot
of our national highway
What’s the news?
Your bones being ground
like sugar canes
in the grinding machine
of an indifferent polity
Who cares for people not breathing?
The one who cooks you alive
in the cauldron of a simmering day
with a misshapen ladle
sculpted out of moldy
flesh of the sacred books
dripping larvae of hatred
And who’s the traitor?
The one who leaves you alone
to die on the highway
and goes to rejoice
in the shelter of his own belly
and festering pits of greed below
*In the epic, The Mahabharata, Yudhishter, the Righteous one, had to answer Yama, the God of Death, disguised as Yakha to bring his dead brothers back to life.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
Kathmandu
By the flooded river
wasp-yellow and blunt
bulldozers razing
crusty edges
of the green paddy fields
have dreams
of a mighty dragon
wielding its glistening fangs
sharp enough to shred
the patron rain-serpents
of the valley into stones of oblivion.
Beyond the shanty town
choked from the indestructible dust
of the new century,
the mountains one more time
seem young all over again,
alluvial and parrot-green,
only enduring memory
in the minds of the visiting clouds
instead of fire seeds they once
clenched in their fluffy fists,
a faint fête
from the itinerary of wayward eons
where flowers once bloomed
in their perfumed armpits.
Rest is just flash fiction;
a junkyard of shamed regimes,
a stink tinged with reeking thoughts
rushing into the hippo heart
of the ugly city with the speed
of a buffalo bull
carrying its ultimate rider
into the streets
of a sick, wheezing realm.
–Yuyutsu Sharma
Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu Sharma is a world renowned Himalayan poet and translator. He has published ten poetry collections including, The Second Buddha Walk, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems and Annapurna Poems. Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts Creative Writing Workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home. Currently, Yuyutsu Sharma edits, Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.
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