Splendour and Doom

Its ragged leafless candelabra boughs

flaunt insurgent smouldering red flowers—

insurgent because

only this blithe exuberant exultant stubborn red

beating off heat dust and grime,

can hoist a funeral gleam and repudiate,

very briefly though,

the engulfing grey tide of highrise urban

expansion and eventual decay.

The tall Krishnachura tree,

a magnificent blossomer, an anchorage too,

holds its ground now threatened by bulldozers, cranes,

in a corner of the ragged scrawny park–

-a park more doomed, more fragile perhaps,

than the pariah kites tumbling high in the air.

I am passing by like the rest.

Soon it will be gone.

I see the tree as a guardian being

who gathers up in his troubled imperial image

all that the city is,

has been and will be,

all that we happen to be,

all that we have been,

all the transience,

all the uncertain power,

all the uncertain, ever-returning glory and splendour.

Kolkata

(May, 2022)

Date: November 9, 2022