Poetry

Kulbir Beera

By

Debasish Parashar

Keep a Vigil With the Corpses

(In recent times there has been a sudden spike in the number of dead bodies found in the Satluj in Punjab, India. There has also been a simultaneous rise in the number of farmer suicides in Punjab’s Green revolution belt)

Keep a vigil over the corpses

Kisans of Malwa stripped of time

Mutilated by dogs

Swim along blue Satluj

Trapped and checked by sluicegates of progress

Bhakra of dams and dreams!

Keep a vigil over the corpses.

Bulla Shah weeps in silence

Writes a chronicle of horror or an epitaph?

Oh Punjab! How green you were!

Hopes for the hungry, Bullets for others

Blossomed with a Green revolution

Food, fertility and foreign relations

Why the blue turns red with the Green?

On a windy Punjab night moonlit and blue

A corpse (or a Kisan?) from Malwa

Confessed volumes of your infidelity!

I have heard chronicles of many corpses

Some living, some dead

With meagre land or jobless vagabonds

Small and marginal or debt-ridden who jumped into blue Satluj

(To at least generate some hydropower!)

Stuck at the sluicegates

Not even suicides

Their transparent bodies undetected by underwater cameras

Spoke of Rights and wrongs and…?

Technology is inadequate

Just for a change

Keep a vigil with the corpses

Keep a vigil for the corpses.

*Kisan  –  Farmer

Anonymous

1.

Better not try

To impress

With your sorrows

Life has few hollows

To be empty

2.

Your promises are leaves

In a forest deciduous

Fertile in fall

Otherwise green

3.

If memories were governed

By demand and supply

Market forces I mean

All geniuses could be ordinary

All histories linear

since they are not

Meanings can be metaphors.

Debasish Parashar

Debasish Parashar is a Public Policy, Governance and Art & Culture enthusiast, Singer, Lyricist, Poet (to some extent) and Social journalist based in New Delhi, India. He is a postgraduate in English literature from University of Delhi. He has sung for ‘In Search of God’ and ‘Raag’. His write-up on Majuli has been listed amongst top 100 online #worldheritagesites stories globally in May 2016 by Agilience Authority Index. His literary works have been featured in prestigious Indian and international initiatives like Visual Verse (Germany/U.K), Swarajya, Youthkiawaaz, Bordoisila, Spillwords (Poland), Scriggler (U.K), Kahaniya, Sadda haq, Assam Tribune and many more.