Two evocative poems, by Sunil, on the pandemic, exclusively for Different Truths.

#1: This street, That street
 
a street awash
in the orange light
of the masthead lamp;
 
 
it reminds them of a lonely lane
leading back home, along with the
chime of the bells of the herds
and call of the young herdsman,
 
when a quick-footed dusk spreads out
its aanchal
and
hugs the rugged country in a maternal
embrace.
 
City!
Never appeared its
opposite so strikingly
on this deserted summer evening
in Mumbai.
 
 
 
#2. Nightly Transformation
 
The
houses arranged on each other
as stacked-up items in a gargantuan
warehouse, tend to
lose their day- solidity, materiality
 
when the golden lights come on, an eerie silence
descends, a coy maid lost in the silent city, under curfew
imposed by the Covid-19, a new “tyrant”
 
the fancy addresses, vertical columns, gated communities,
 
become
the castle towers and cells of a neo-Gothic noir
being played out daily,
in a post-industrial culture.

Visual by Different Truths

Dr. Sunil Sharma

A humble word-worshipper: catcher of elusive sounds, meanings and images. Published 27 creative and critical books--- joint and solo. A winner of, among others, the Panorama Golden Globe Award-2023, and, Nissim Award for Excellence-2022 for the novel Minotaur. His poems were included in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, 2015. Editor of the monthly Setu journal (English):

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