A Requiem to my Backyard

The peacock sits high up on the metal giant

quivering beak, catching the tremors in the air

The wise old tree felled on the rocky ground; watching,

dark skin wizened and papery; sap drying

counting its limbs become machine-cut cylinders

one concentric circle for every year

it had braved; against storms, lightning, even drought

What have the brick and mortar Titans wrought...

The skies look down on the cringing edges

of the feeble hollow of water

helpless and parched;

a mother with dry breasts,

vehement white clouds and borewells

clamouring to evict the fish;

swimming between the coloured plastic bags

in the lake’s own scanty tears.

The woman; wearing the heavy crown

of creation and nurture; guilty in her supremacy

Flinches at the quiver of the chainsaw in her remote hands

retches drinking from safe, labelled bottles

With visions of her children; dry-tongued

and looking at extinct trees; frozen in huge cylinders of ethyl alcohol

She stands trembling; in her tall tower

the defeated earth crumbling under her feet.

-Anuradha Venkatnarayan