Three poems by Sneha Kanta

the spice night held ~

I rested in the cypress like shade of the cloudless sky, and the glistening sea
beckoned rest. The thermostat of blackness shivered through a warm
pungency in the air. My eyelids were swollen of nightmares, when I woke at an
hour whose time was not known; and sand caressed my toes with ardor.

 the dusty                       
 midnight soliloquies                       
 looked for him --                       
 earth, sky and sea.                       

 a moment so profound,                       
 silence had a sound                       
 of vast emptiness                       
 stored in its vessel.                       

The reckless hour passed like a stroke of lightning, and dark purple clouds
arranged themselves such; the sky grew heavier. Girls like me were nomads
of the world that nobody stopped for a second to understand. Before the crack
of dawn, there was rain.




in stillness

There I was again, at the shore, and looked at the vast sea bent upon
mending its own form, in its fluidity. The world was on one side, and I stood on
another cliff, watching the sun prepare to set: that was the perpetual symbol
of nearness and living. The distance between the inhabitants of the world and
me increased after sundown: their perennial motion was stoic, unlike the
movement in my motionless decorum.

 to dance         
 in chaos,         
 to touch ―          
 dried leaves         
 as i fall,         
 was the order.         

The sea changed like an avalanche aftermath; the high tides grew with the
fullness of the moon. I gathered like an alone rock, transmuted by
shimmering moonbeams; I was a storm in the entity of fibers I held within that
nothing could calm. The sea called me close and tranquility enlarged its
measurement to fit my disposition. I lay on the golden sand and soaked its
granules, the salty drizzle from the sea and the purlin of the moon. I was to
lay alone at this spot and slumber, over the vast stretch of its circumference.




the veil ~

I take long walks alone and intently watch scenes ahead of the road alter, that
submerge me into whichever season it is. I lose all concept of time and gain a
wordless understanding of things, within and without. I am here now: near the
ruins that appear highlighted with the changing architectures of the sun.
Something finite brushes through the ruins to reconstruct them into a different
shape, as traversals of eras take their courses. I gaze at the vast ocean and
the line of mountains on the other side, and my eyes drift, looking for him.

 how the sky                       
 lifts its veil                       
 for the sun                       
 to show its face.                       

I am here, I am here. I have to remind the kernel of my heart, to breathe and
to sustain its substance. The sea is my forgetting and remembering.



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Bio:  Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a poet, critic and writer. She believes in poetry being a form of dissent and is intrigued by unspoken words that vocabularies cannot define and believes in a world with no borders. She has taught undergraduate students literature and has also been an Assistant Editor at Charnwood Arts, United Kingdom. Postcolonial literature and literary theory and criticism are her areas of research interest. You can write to her at [email protected]

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