For tomorrow then, when?
Smrithi Amarendran

In this city of long summers, the water always remembers —
seeds we scatter — in the presence of the evanescent cries
of the morning Myna, of our prophetic ways, ways that sound
loud and unwise. Seeds that promised starved the green,
welcomed black soot, thick in our lungs and skies.

We watched in vain the water running brown, the rain falling down
over roots that deplete, with no time to breathe — stop —
wonder: when did we turn tormentor, the green cosmos – the tormented?

Puffing in concrete, coal, corruption, holding a bleeding quill dipped,
dipped and over dipped in tomorrow’s time.

When will we ask, when will we listen to the soul of the deep
deep seas filled with forgotten cadavers, decapitated slippers,
reams of oils and shards of stupor dancing around plastic ghosts?

For tomorrow then, when should we stop — start — and listen:
to the sounds of the living,
to the emptying oceans,
to the morning Myna:
that our seeds have long been rotten, forgotten, left languishing.