Three Wonderful Poems by Amita Paul

The Highland Triology 

 

Heavenly Hell 

The women wear turquoise and jade by the kilo.

Those who look up at the sky see heaven’s lake. 

Children drink sea buckthorn juice , not milo

 

People come for others and for their own sake

And smell the juniper in the wild and inside homes

Through capillary action water thirst to slake

 

Centuries old water security systems for the tomes 

For irrigation as for domestic use. Ice and snow

Are too far away. Some have pearl - studded combs.

 

The Old Man of the Sea is worshipped here even now

A dragon protects each side of every door of his palace

Two rivers merge carrying their own colours in streams somehow

 

Around the high snows an unearthly peace and eerie dread 

In streams and blotches on sand and ice the signs

Of cold- blooded murder and hot-blooded bloodshed 

 

All the prophets of peace were false say far off pines

Drenched in gore where vultures hover waiting 

In wet red ink a poet pens his witnessing lines 

 

Man is never done with his own Man - baiting 

An Existence as precarious as blade-ice-skating

 

Menace 

The Manuscripts are fanned with ceremonial yak- hair chamara whisks

The breath of modernity is suffocated in the throats of chubby children 

Eat fatten think in no other way but in grooves there are too many risks

 

Smiles glint in slant eyes under clearest blue of threatening heaven 

Severe limits are mistaken for happiness like stupid  independence 

At oblique angles far away are horns of mountains seven 

 

Only a fool knows not how to mend a broken fence

But who will speak the truth to the ugly giant rabbits

In human shape burrowing blindly quick to take offence 

 

Racing up and done steep stone stairs in small maroon habits

Some hurry to ghee- burning lamps and fluttering flags 

Others drag their fingers on ornate wheels till humming hits 

 

Somewhere in woods of green stand antlered stags 

Somewhere an ancient stone carved monastery merges 

Into its mountain background where this century drags 

 

Tyres of armoured jeeps plough into green grass verges 

And freeze to glacial ice the hot red blood that surges

 

High Plateau 

The long haired goats huddle by cobalt waters

That turn slate grey or burnt sienna brown 

Or rusty red or silky indigo watched by the squatters 

 

Sunset the leather tents show fires that crown

The glint of water wind-shadows of night 

Like gems that sparkle in Nature’s night gown 

 

A plaintive flute pipes up telling of blight 

A wailing voice sings pain into the air

Insisting heaven hear of earthlings’ plight

 

Creation fair asks Creator unfair

Or Fair Creator by unfair Creation 

Evoked impugned importuned in a dare

 

Under high heaven all earth is one nation

A few miles west though one and east another

State now at war the worst abomination 

 

The goats don’t care how fares the chilly air

They sleep caressed by breeze in their warm hair

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia is one of the various pen names used by Punjab-born, Patna-based retired Indian bureaucrat Amita Paul , for her original writings in different genres, in English, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, featured in various anthologies, journals, and online creative writing forums. A recipient of many awards and recognitions, Amita nevertheless is reclusive by nature and prefers to keep a low profile. She loves silence , solitude and Nature.