An entire sea packed inside the grove, park’s edge, away from a car-choked street.
Faint echoes from the Grove of Daphne.
Waves crash the shoreline, wet the twisted palms, near
the bend, where the ocean and sea fuse like lovers, in red-hot
passion.
Moss-covered fort-ruins rise as phantom, in the choppy
sea,
to mock
the hauteur of the imperial masters, on a civilizing mission; the
only reminders—broken walls, parapets, towers, a faded plaque
commemorating
a massacre, claimed a victory for the invaders and their enlisted
gods in search of new markets.
The wash speaks gently to a blind widow, in the classic frothy-forked tongues, she
sits quiet
with coir baskets, near a capsized boat, half buried in sand, other half, in salty waters that spare none;
a fat cat curls into a furry ball, looks at the tourists with a
blue eye open, brown closed, in a blissful feline zone.
Rain beats irregular time on the corrugated tin-sheets of stalls, the Henderson-mermaid still comes to watch the winged creatures from the trees
build sand-castles
for the forlorn waif who daily waits for
a familiar boat popping out of mists
of time, very eager for a loud laughter
and a warm tight embrace, after a long sleepless night
in
an abandoned shack with broken roof and red tiles.
Sometimes, that gloomy space inside the grove, where Dionysus
rules for his post-modern fans, the elves come to dance in circles
to
an unheard music, the place
illuminated by a swarm
of fireflies, a crescent moon;
mystery shadows flicker in the copse, on certain short bitter wintry nights.
.
-Sunil Sharma
Picture Fran De Anda
https://www.instagram.com/fran.de.anda/?hl=en
Bio:
A humble word-worshipper: catcher of elusive sounds, meanings, images.
Published 28 creative and critical books— joint and solo.
Winner, among others, of the Panorama Golden Globe Award-2023, and, Nissim Award for Excellence-2022 for the political novel Minotaur.
Poems included in the UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, 2015.
He is the managing editor of Setu bilingual journal (English) that has more than 5.5-million-plus views so far:
—https://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html
Academic |Writer | Critic | Editor | Freelance Journalist | Reviewer | Literary Interviewer
Editor: Setu: http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html
Website:https://sunil-sharma.com
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