The New Poem | Sagari Chhabra

I walked up the mountain

so stolid, so whole,

it spoke to my soul;

‘These rocks took aeons to create,

must you generate

dust and debris;

for you are destroying

the intrinsic foundation of my strength,

with your blasted development’.

 

Weary of the city’s heat

I went to the river

to soak my blistered feet;

‘My daughter,

that dam has blocked my back-waters,

they’ve drowned villages, temples

and even the rich alluvial soil;

must you foil

the potters’ living;

the villagers who grew their crops

on this land so fertile,

must you pour your poisoned bile,

lay waste my waters

for your mega-city,

for remember your electrifying night life

is an intrinsic act of violence!’

 

I listened in silence.

 

Then the charkha

with its spinning spokes

so slow, spoke,

‘Is speed necessarily progress?

Is not simple living

the new Gandhi in khadi?’

 

And I wondered if the world

without the unfurled Man

was the new poem.

Sagari Chhabra
New Delhi
22nd September ‘26