Elegy For The Earth

By Rituranjan Gogoi

What of this ailing earth?

I ask the last trees, lamenting,

Of the bees not coming back

Along with the last of butterflies fluttering a dying song,

A drought in the land,

The Whales and Tunas singing their oceanic elegies,

For atom by atom, cell by cell,

Everything burns in plunder,

And, I still look for the migrating Ospreys,

And of starlings storming the blue heavens,

All lost somewhere,

Their cries a distant memory,

And it seems;

Already we are on the verge of the next big extinction,

And, I remember in silence

The summer noon glistening on a dragonfly’s wing,

Gone like the blood red sunset, riding on a heat-wave

Microwaving the last goldenrods;

The barren hawthorn awaiting pollination,

The botanists weaving endangered green eulogies…

All these nights I have stood alone when the fireflies came,

In the light of a sad broken moon, illuminating

An apocalyptic cityscape!

Capitalism of growth, stock splendour,

Colonies on Mars,

These doesn’t invite the rains to quench the thirst of a dry land

Dreaming in dust storms,

We all knew this was going to happen,

We raised flags, signed petitions,

Yet we couldn’t stop this inevitable dying,

Everything contaminated;

Our futile race of progress, faith in billionaires,

Created this irredeemable crack,

Our plastic hearts beating didn’t understand the primordial Epithalamion

Of healing, of rest, of harmony and love,

Except the poets grieving with words,

Amidst skyscrapers, glass museums,

Of forests long gone, flowers long dead and forgotten

Fossilized species, Seasons ruined,

I ask again – ‘‘what of this dying Earth?’’

Mourning;

For the last drop of amber-honey,

Of the last snow-owl passing in her winter meditation,

Now, who will teach us the meaning of salvation?

The beauty of transcendence in the wild?

By Rituranjan Gogoi