Written piece
Art For Those Who Need It & Beginnings
Pallavi Ghosh
India
About this piece
Dear Editors,
I am sharing two poems—"Art For Those Who Need It" and "Beginnings"—for your consideration. Poetry has for long served as a thread weaving together histories and lived realities across geographies and generations. And I hope my poems live up to this tradition.
Art For Those Who Need It
I hope art holds you
The way the world never could.
Like the earthen pot
That holds water,
Or the copper pit
That cradles fire.
I hope it betrays you
In a way you become —
Not just survive —
And keep becoming.
Through the celestial cycles
Of Uranus, Saturn,
Jupiter And Venus.
And many, many years
Of pickling thoughts.
I hope you shrink
And explode
In a way only art provokes.
I hope art kills you
So that you can live.
Live like never before
And you find a tongue
That’s yours
In every lore.
I hope it undoes
Man’s creations,
His soul-splitting divisions—
Inescapable.
I hope art plays with you.
Tugs at the threads
Like a cherub, in jest,
A Renaissance fest.
*
Beginnings
Now that the storm has passed,
There’s time for things.
To make room —
To build —
One has to sift
Through the rubble.
Run one’s fingers
Through ashes and sand,
To salvage
Those salvageable parts—
Metal, wires, bolts—
For the inevitable alchemy
That precedes the rise
Of a razed city,
Erased history,
And flashes of
A world gone by.
Now that the storm has passed,
There’s time for things.
For a dull life
To take over
And lull everyone
To sleep.
To wake up
To lush fields,
As promised,
For all, beyond pedigrees,
As they should be.