What Good Is A Poem? – By Ayushmita Debnath
What Good Is A Poem? – By Ayushmita Debnath
In a war-torn nation, it is not the smell of a roadside daisy,
The song of a magpie in a far-off chestnut tree,
Or the low grumble of cooling thunder in summertime haste
That dare ever land their shade on mankind’s scorching fate.
It is the sorrow-stricken enmity,
A famished belly,
Dignity disrobed and overthrown
In the depths of mighty Lithe
That bring human thighs, ears and intestine in our platter-
With every kill, art dies a little bit.
When the times are better, we try our best
But our efforts are riddled with mistakes;
Our efforts
Our mistakes
This negates
This desecrates.
(Lithe is a river flowing along the primal African shore:
A drink from its fountain is sweet, and bitter and decaying.)
It was good to know you all;
We don’t know how to make good things stay,
To pray is a destitute man’s last resort;
In the face of absurdity his last retort;
And what is a prayer if not a poem?
What is a human if not a poet?
(Lithe, my mother, my last abode,
I sing of you too, Lithe).
Ayushmita Debnath is a young Indian aspiring author with a soft spot for poetry. She has been captivated by the infinite possibilities of the figurative written word and its prosody since tenth grade.
