Tag: Covid times
May Day Mayday
How may we labour
To save ourselves?
Shall we gather about us
Bulwarks of uncertainty
To guard us from future
Arrogance? Shall we collect
Images of unaccommodated mankind
That we may be protected
From fears of ennui, enclosed
In our own four walls. Will
The memory of mountains
Not seen in decades ensure
Our survival as a species?
For myself, I call forth
The blazing amaltas that
Flame the streets of my city
That their fire consume the
Distance between us, and
Refine my relief to pity.
Now that our masks have revealed us
How curious, this motley masquerade
To sashay forth in some carnival’s
Parade as if the gold and dazzle and points
Of lace could present to the crowds some
Other soul, an alien head, a faerie face.
What deception is left to practice now
When we hide ourselves from neighbours
And friends. Will we know each other, when
This ends, or shall we hear each stranger ask
Who are you now, without your mask?
A Table of Contents
I hadn’t seen the house. He hadn’t seen
The table. We were buying momentous
Things for a future in which we’d never
Been. “Bigger,” he said, “tell them to make it
Wider and longer!” “Where will we place it?”
I said, looking at the dimensions he’d sent us.
But the size of a table depends on more than
How many sit. My parents knew – if you
Build it they will come. And we did. Their
Table held more than ever lived in that
House. There was always room, food,
Conversation. And now we live in self-
Isolation. And the too-big table draws
Together our meagre four – with our
Violins, our laptops, our books, tools, papers
Our cat, puzzles, painting projects – more,
In fact, a binding and gathering of ourselves
To ourselves, a tabling of a core.
‘Not by eastern windows only’
I read it first when I was twelve,
A poem my father remembered from
His early days in school. I’m not sure
What he was thinking but we spoke of it
Often over the years. Battles waged and lost
Wars that ended in tears, hope was always
The prize. Because the quality of light
Perhaps, is also twice blest, touching
Those who are beaten and those who wield
The batons of power with the same
Vision of unrest. Every woman sitting
Through the night, every student braving
Authority’s might, every migrant
Shouting against the roar, every
Citizen courting arrest – they know
Why they fight, they know what this
Is for, they know why they persist. Hope
Is the only reward of all those who resist.
Ode to the Ordinary (with apologies to Shelley)
Hail to thee, O Ordinary Thing! Beloved
Thou never wert! If of thee I must sing
To the romantics I must revert. Because
Seriously, who even notices a handshake,
Buying bread, passing people in the hall
Whose eye you avoid if you look at them at
All? High fives, fist bumps, chatting with
An office-mate, having to trudge to lunch
Another building, same office bunch- huddle
Close in the elevator discussing what you
Ate. Yes, it is sublime, in its
Way, the unwashed beauty of the
Ordinary day, the unnoticed, unapplauded
Transience of the repetitively mundane
The ubiquitously profane.
Say it now in romantic rhyme
The Ordinary is the Skylark of our time.
Giti Chandra 