CAVED—7.8 Billion

1.
This one looks like a planet of red windmills whirring
or a field of poppies, a wild corona of a star, heart of sunflower,
this pretty thing is fanged, arsenal in Death’s stockpile,
small unseen things are perfectly precise,
Hanuman burnt the city of Lanka thus, eroding pride.
2.

The bush is bursting with red berries,
spring has slipped through the crevices breathing green on the city,
a musician plays his oud to the sky in himself,
the trees are gravestones to the forgotten dead,
the deer conglomerate driven to community,
more families staked by windows notice the heartbeat of nature.

3.
The camera has vertigo, it’s crazy arc
leering on the hoarded splendor of one family,
(what madness was this to record and pridefully share?)
lines of bottles on the kitchen cabinetry
riddled with oil of bright urine hue,
toilet roles, bounties, tissues, food cans,
a pantry full of debris for doomsday,
this raid of the innards of stores,
this back-to-basics, to Freud’s Id of fear and self-first.

4.
Where do we send our unclaimed sorrow?
The unlabeled debris of life?
The racking cough of unprocessed wounds?
There is no island to send them off, be done, be free.
Like those lines of caskets in dirt in Hart island,
where New York City is belching unclaimed bodies
its gut overflowing.

5.
The mind is like an abacus now
computing deaths on the excel sheet
of consciousness; from the Spanish flu 20-50 million,
from the Black plague 50 million, from COVID… 
what black hole continues to gorge up souls
or is it an empyrean of hopeful light,
what joust happens in the universe’s annals
between what forces, this unending play
into and out of life, where is that mighty
being who once gave the song of life
to a tremulous warrior’s heart in the middle of battle?
Each of us is a naive question as we have always been
curved like an embryo, full-stopped by death.

— Usha Akella, from ‘Singing In The Dark - a global anthology of poetry under lockdown’ published by Penguin Vintage