Poetry: New Poems

Dear Life

My words I minister to like my children,
offer them the freedom to be themselves –

warn of risks from the moment they are born,
their very existence an act of rebellion.

Their bones breathe the mystery of the universe,
summoning all to love the way singing does.

I’m haunted by the enormity of their grief –
of the equal and opposite possibility of limitless joy

if we let love be our unfailing guide, follow
our inner compass, refusing to relinquish

our fate to self-serving, self-appointed gods.
Let life realise dreams that spell the light,

speak in the tongues of trees, meditate on stars,
the smallest that burn slowly forever, seeking

to summon the soul of every wanderer.
Words hold the key to their own mystery –

offer shelter, a cradle of bliss where one can linger,
listening to music you’ve never heard before

like the dazzle of cheetahs, tigers in ecstatic pursuit,
the luminescence of light whirling in earthly delight.

Knowing all my words are what others make of them,
I teach them compassion, forgiveness, understanding.

My words are prayers to comfort a fatally injured bird,
tend to it with the every thingness of love until it stops breathing.

I have nothing else to offer, dear Life –
words are what I breathe and eat, the clothes I wear,

dreams that sing me to sleep, silence that greets me awake:
words are the only wealth I possess – my truth, my love.

Shanta Acharya, Dear Life (LWL Books, USA; 2025)

Imagine

The song of humpbacked whales –
sound air makes when you blow through conch shells –

Their uniquely decorated flukes fall on waves,
huge white flippers slapping the water.

Forests, canyons, rivers, waterfalls,
vast double rainbows that hold us in thrall.

Imagine a grizzly bear on its haunches
in the bend of the river scooping up silver slivers,
tossing minnows into its yawning mouth.

Blush of a bride in the sky at sun rise, sun set
spread in ever widening abandonment.

A smoking volcano blowing spectacular hoops
of fire, molten lava flowing for days,
depositing ash on the tray of land.

Imagine cloud formations of all configurations,
dove white to crow black, altocumulus to tornado chasers.

The smile of a camel filling the desert;
a cheetah in motion, the dance of King Cobras; 

Sighing of leaves when the wind gives them a shake;
hawks rising on tides of wind, soaring on wild wings streamlined.

Imagine a colony of bats meditating upside down
on an ancient tree grown big like a grandparent –
branches, trunk, roots jostling together for space.

The beauty of a snow leopard living in recluse
at the feet of majestic Mount Everest.

Imagine the wings of a butterfly hovering;
their translucency in moonlight revealing…

Now open your eyes wide and witness
our world bereft of nature’s blessing.

Published in The Literary Review, USA, and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry edited by Sudeep Sen (HarperCollins, India; 2012).

Shanta Acharya, Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers, India; 2017)

All You Can Do

Here’s your thunder stolen by others,
your losses, ships that never return.

Here’s your life passing slowly by,
your body of song promising all it can do.

Here’s your heart reaching out to others,
your thoughts fresh rays of sun.

Here’s your dream scattered across the sky,
falling stars not knowing what they can do.  

Here’s hope gold at the edge of the rainbow,
inscribing lives that spell the light.

Here’s your fear walking in front of you,
thinking there is nothing you can do.

Here are your hands, place them in mine;
I’ll show you the world is yours.

Here’s your true love waiting for you,
your tree of life, radiant in bloom.

Here’s what you do, what you can do,
it’s your future, make of it what you will –

Here’s life in all its squalor and splendor,
here’s your world and all you can do.

Published in The Little Magazine, India, and ArtemisPoetry, UK.

Shanta Acharya, What Survives Is The Singing (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK; 2020)

Somewhere, Something

We travel not to explore another country,
but to return home fresh, bearing gifts.

Our lives the airports we fly from,
our bodies and souls, maps and compasses –
days the journeys we make,
past the continents we leave behind.

Surely there is somewhere, something
that justifies our coming and going?

Isn’t that why we seek a sign from each other
of experiences worth dying for
as we commune with love under starlight
brittle with frost and the sharp taste of blood?

Let’s fly free, not nailed to a mast;
see the universe with new eyes,
not blinded by shadows that light casts.

Shanta Acharya, Dreams That Spell The Light (Arc Publications, UK; 2010)

Shringara

The image in the mirror is no longer frozen
in an unimaginable longing.

A participant in life’s carnival, I prepare for illusion.

Elizabeth Arden’s flawless finish foundation frosts
on skin breathing Shahnaz Hussain’s sandalwood face cream.
Givenchy’s mascara thickens and lengthens eyelashes,
rosewood powder blushes on cheeks. My mask is complete
with desire red, double colour, everlasting Estee Lauder lipstick.
I spray myself generously with Nirvana and Samsara.

I travel towards what end I cannot say –

Along the way, those I meet and those I do not,
all the things that happen to me and those that do not
keep defining me in some inexplicable way.
Daily the mirror mocks my wrinkles, streaks of grey.

If I am the result of unrepeatable circumstances,
what use is there in seeking escape from self-enunciation?
In the end we are all dead. The days become my shringara.

First published in Ariel (Canada) in 1998; in the same year the poem appeared in Agenda (UK) and in Kavya Bharati (India). In 2009, the poem was included in the anthology Indian English Women Poets (India), and appears in its current version in Imagine: New and Selected Poems by Shanta Acharya.

Homecoming

In every city I visit, in every cathedral or mosque,
pagoda or temple, gurudwara or synagogue –

in every space enroute to a kind of self-discovery,
I light a candle, offer a prayer.

With every prayer, I wish for things –
some material, others not so tangible, for myself
and others I’ve loved more than you.

All through the hours of my worship I converse with you,
ask why you’ve withheld the gifts I value most?

You led me to believe you love me –
sometimes, you fulfil the smallest desire of mine.
Why do you leave me in such uncertainty?

Don’t know why I presume you might listen
more carefully to my entreaties in a foreign land.
I am the one on holiday, not you.

Sharing my thoughts, I keep hoping
you will talk to me through your silence.

How can I forget it was you
who taught me to accept my need for you?

I try to recall my state of bliss before I was born,
before I demanded my own life separate from you.

If you got hurt you never showed me,
your love kept watch as I lived and got hurt.

How was I to know the consequences of my deeds?
Why did you not protect me from myself?

My loneliness has brought me back to where I’d begun.
I’ve nowhere else to go, don’t turn me away again on
another journey of self-discovery for I am done.

Shanta Acharya, What Survives Is The Singing (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK; 2020)