Perched on top of a billboard,
a peacock poises delicately on the periphery,
Its iridescent feathers—blue and green,
bathe in the dusky blushing sky.
The city’s cacophony roars
through cars, trucks and trains.
The towers lay siege to the sky—
the kites had once played there.
Under the flyovers, in tiny wells
empty of cement, bricks and stone,
the jungle babbler fills the lacuna
with frail sticks and urban waste.
The skyline shifts and disappears;
black wires suspend between erect poles.
The brown-headed barbet swerves
around, hysterical and dazed.
The water dips. The lake moulds
into clay, turning a sombre grey.
Trapped behind a silver web,
the billed duck no longer wades.
The lapwing bellows a cry:
premonition of disaster, the city says.
Heaven succumbs to the pitiless land;
the natives have flown from the sky.
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at [email protected].
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