Five Poems
by Sarah Das Gupta
City Nights
In bright-lit bars the drinks are flowing.
Fortunes are lost in games of poker,
drugs sold on dark side streets,
neon adverts flash, brash, clashing.
Cinemas announce the latest hits:
‘City Werewolves’, ‘Alien Stranglers’.
Bowling alleys, Pizza parlours,
Cabarets, one-night, sleazy hotels
Cat’s amber eyes burn in the dark alleys,
trash cans crash as drunks stumble past.
In back yards, dogs howl mournfully,
chained up to dismal, cold kennels.
In ruined graveyards, broken crosses,
limbless angels, open tombs,
huddle among nettles and rotten grass.
The dead are forgotten, abandoned.
Moonlight falls on walls of graffiti,
slogans, protests, racist comments.
Frost covers the sidewalks with fine linen.
In the gloom a church clock tolls the hours.
Across the river, a foghorn sounds.
eerily blaring through the frozen mist.
The clang of boat chains marks the banks
as vessels rise and fall with the ebbing tide.
As the first light shines on tall skyscrapers
Traffic crawls sleepily along empty streets.
Stalls of fruit, splashes of red, green and yellow,
gleam cheerfully through the early fog.
Along the docks, hoses spray the cobbles.
Night retreats to the city’s shadows,
now begins the new day’s fray.
A KOLKATA DIARY
Trams packed with passengers, bags, animals, babies
Women clutch bunches of green spinach, spices,
garlands of white flowers.
Cows amble lazily across the lines,
among the rickshaws, then out of sight!
Scooters with smart young men and pretty girls
weave their way through traffic like bright, fluttering birds.
Lorries, vans, carts moving, then once more static.
From roadside temples incense wafts through morning fog.
From mosques Imams call the faithful to evening prayer,
In New Market’s labyrinth of alleys, the scents of sandalwood
and coffee drift,
through the bright bangles, eager buyers carefully sift.
Jewellers’ shops gleam with rubies, gold and pearls,
Secret caves from fairy tales, of Arabian Nights,
of Indian princes,
Through the crowds are glimpses of a golden horde of
mangoes, spilling out of wicker baskets.
Oranges shine, bright beacons in the growing gloom.
By the Hooghly, ghats lead down to the fast -flowing river.
The city poor shiver, washing clothes and bathing at dawn.
In festivals clay images of the gods themselves slowly sink,
severing the human link with Man, now left to quietly mourn
until Durga, Ganesh, Lakshmi, return next Autumn to be re-born.
On the green space of the Maidan countless cricket matches are underway.
Wearing ‘whites’, boys knock balls for six or amid loud cheers they take a wicket
Monsoon rains flood the city; streets become brown canals of floating rubbish!
In every quarter, rickshaw wallahs plod through waist deep water.
The streets are home for many. Clay ovens puff out chocking smoke,
as coal or coke cooks staple diets of rice, dal, aubergines or okra. .
Death here is no Western-style taboo, no polite euphemism will do.
Corpses are carried through the streets on bamboo stretchers
white with flowers.
At crematoriums or openly at the burning ghats funeral pyres
burn for hours.
A wonderful city but one of extremes,
a city of nightmare, but also of dreams!
Give us Shade!
Shady plane trees, green protection against an intrusive sun,
light filters through a leafy canvas, which mediates
between heat and skin.
Chestnuts, tall and stately, block out exhausting rays.
On roof tops of smart city flats, eco-gardens afford
costly, shade.
Old church yards, now resuscitated, offer a dark pool
of refuge beneath ancient yews.
Office workers snatch their lunches amid ghostly shades.
Beside the river, bright red awnings shelter couples
from unremitting heat.
Yet shade is not equitable; for many, it is unobtainable.
In the grey yards of the inner city – where are the lungs,
the cool, green light of empty spaces?
Among the city’s debris, two old women sipping tea,
sit on broken steps, fanning themselves in the stifling heat.
Dead gardens, graveyards of filthy mattresses, broken chairs
and cardboard boxes
offer no shade, no refuge, no protection.
For them no oasis only an ever- distant mirage,
among the soulless tower blocks, grey grass
and grey parking lots.
Yet, in the leafy suburbs the affluent and prosperous,
sip sundowners by a shady pool,
chatting lightly of global warning over an alfresco meal.
Night and darkness briefly unite the city until the sun rises - for some -
another scorching day.
THE CITY’S GUTS
Among the old chairs, waiting sadly for a sitter,
stained mattresses lie over the side of empty bins.
The junk yard’s a faded, sepia photo of our past.
The waves of flotsam and jetsam wash up here.
A forlorn, fluffy animal, once some child’s pet,
lies, cotton entrails hanging out.
In a heap, a platoon of broken tin soldiers,
some decapitated, in a horror of mangled metal,
awaits final annihilation and defeat.
The boundary fence surrenders
to the ranks of rubbish.
Iron posts, bent and buckled, fail to
stem the advance.
Stinking piles of rotting refuse cross
the Front Line to invade the Park.
Carpets, old and battered,
spread out in a futile gesture,
under a two-legged table
and wheelless bike.
Scavengers, the dispossessed, rifle through
once prized possessions.
Vulture-like, they hover, flutter and fight
over the carcass of the city, its rotting guts.
The Broken City
A blindman sits outside a burger joint
Feeling for coins so casually thrown
A woman with bulging plastic bags
Squats on cardboard, muddy with footprints
Of passersby who go on passing
Without once looking or stopping
The city skyline, grey, jagged
Like vandalised tomb stones or broken teeth
In backyards the flotsam and jetsam
Of the city’s washed up and abandoned
Dead matches, dog shit, chewing gum
Squashed burger in the gutter
Lollie pop sticks and pools of vomit
Mangey cats and stray dogs
Poke and paw among the rubbish
On lighted terraces the last cocktails
Are expertly shaken and poured
In smart hotels, caviar and champagne
While a piano seductively plays
In red velvet-padded casinos
Smart croupiers control the roulette wheel
Eye-watering fortunes are won or lost
Sidewalk druggies, the homeless, the lost
Squat outside the impressive doors.
BIO: Sarah Das Gupta began writing at the age of 80, after a disabling accident. She has had work published in over 30 countries in many magazines and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart and a Dwarf Star.