Another Day: Two Poems by Sukrita Paul Kumar
Photo: Karan Madhok
‘the golden sheen on the pines / beckons the waves of the grey ocean / and the silver arrows dart forth in unison’
Another Day
when the sun comes from the back door
without knocking
you know it has risen on the sly
revealing the bits of the sky
with laden clouds
the golden sheen on the pines
beckons the waves of the grey ocean
and the silver arrows dart forth in unison
water turns blue
the ocean spills into the universe
as the night somersaults into day
*
Farewell Gift
when you kept your hand
on top of my head
pulling it closer to your chest
on the hospital bed
I know not what flowed
into the deep well of
my being
from the cusp of your palm
soft but resolute
vibrations that awakened my
soul into a serenity
timeless and steady
for ever after you left
***
Sukrita Paul Kumar (born in Kenya) has published several collections of poems, translations and critical books; her most recent collections of poems are Yellow, Salt & Pepper and Vanishing Words. An invited poet at the International Writing Programme (Iowa, USA) and a poet-in-residence in Hong Kong, she is a former Fellow of IIAS, Shimla. She retired as Aruna Asaf Ali Chair, University of Delhi. Currently, guest editor of Indian Literature and co-editor of “Writer in Context” series of books published by Routledge UK, she was awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Award for Literature 2023. You can find her on X: @PaulSukrita.
