Beyond this Room: A Pandemic Poetry collection.
I am Megha Anne Wilson.
My city- Delhi — has been engulfed by the pandemic.
I am locked. I am afraid and I am disoriented.
My city is etched in flames of pyres burning and burning still night and day. When I wake up, Instead of the smell of the dew, I can smell the burnt air singed with burnt flesh and bones. I stay awake at night and write because I am unable to sleep. In the morning, the light of the sun comforts me and I eventually sleep.
The constant wails of the ambulance invoke in me horror and I imagine the worst. The ambulances that don’t wail, have dead bodies within them like dead women pregnant with dead children. The streets are empty, the neighborhood dogs don’t fight anymore. People are dying and gasping.
This pandemic has forced me to abandon all thoughts wise or otherwise. Writing poetry about the birds, the stars, and the Peepal trees outside my home, that I watched through balconies, meshes, and windows, has kept me afloat amidst the terror that has engulfed my city.
These are the poems, mostly happy ones, as the world is still a wonderful place.
Poetry
It doesn’t come to me
The words for a poem so instantly
Of what I want to write about , a poem never fully hits the right spot .
I confuse poetry to a saviour
Saving me the pain that I feel
Saving the anger that gnaws through
Saving the desire that courses deep .
It isn’t a saviour .
It isn’t elemental as most things are
Iike
Desires
Anger
Pain
Poetry is not life
Because life is living
Thriving
Suffering
Striving
Life doesn’t need to talk in words
Sentences ‘metaphors and ruminations
Life needs breath
Breath needs the breeze
Breeze the sun
Sun the sky
The sky is not poetry
It is a vast expanse of love and blue
Cutting across myriad shades in the evening hue
at night , Dark sky , whispering to the stars and the moon
The moon and the stars are really not poetry too
They are movement and light
Not words
Not strings of ah!s and oh!s
They are just light
So you see ?
There is light ,
There is the dark
And then there is life
Yes, there is the breeze too !
There’s no poetry in life
It just isn’t
It just is .
“To write
Is to beckon
Beg
Beckon further
The vast moss of thoughts
That make you feel
Feel as though your feet are on fire
Your tongue guilty of loving
Your embrace so hard that it breaks –
To write is to nurture
With care
And kindness
the swift flight of a broken heart.
An End
I’ve been watching you
From dawn to dusk
Following Your moves
Each evening
As the sky shifts to Dark
You sit there
On the chair
With listless eyes
Asking yourself, “what happened?”
It is strange
How the river
Merging with the sea
Becomes the sea
Washes its identity
To become something completely
Unknown to it
So did I ,once,
Not knowing
Washed away myself for you.
