Inside that mud hive and that rippling leaf-yard,
sometimes I feel the earth is listening to the cries
of the distant deaths, of the billowing silences
the vibrations of the shale shakers separating
silt and clays through the unmanned screen
a slippery underfoot, a cluster of shards
crawl towards a season of permanent abandonment
redrawing the silhouettes of the masked gunmen
blood drips into the narrow river mouth, night
grips history in both hands and sing names
skeletal humans walk by the heap of crushed
and burnt soils, dusky brown gnarled branches,
the morning arrives in a cloud of latex and fire,
tired of the brazen promise of death and destruction.
.
Gopal Lahiri
@gopallahiri
Picture Nick Victor
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Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 33 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose are published across more than one hundred journals and anthologies globally His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 19 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021 and Best of the Nets for poetry in 2025. His ‘Selected Poems’ was published by Classix, New Delhi. His recent book ‘Wasp and Filament ‘ was published by Hogg Press, Madison, US.
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