'The Sound of Third Wave in India' by Sreekanth Kopuri

Every bulletin roars

like a gunpoint obligation

on the temple of the

nation's fourth estate,

as if a noontide of

an unscreened affidavit,

is in store for us,

even as the country just unmasks

it's locked down face

washed afresh by the

first monsoon drafts.

Unlike the sweet silence

of those pre-Covid nights,

in the blissful ignorance of

any sudden morning of cold fever,

today our nights pace in our beds

with the discordant creaks

of a haunting uncertainty

of next minute and a more

uncertain nightmarish morning,

we panic with our children

on our weak hearts,

while the incessant sounds of

those monstrous hydraulics

play second fiddle to orchestrate

some Neroic dreams of national vistas.

In the duel between the

fear-muffled sound

of the public fury and that of

a Theia Mania's failed dream,

the non-violent history of democracy

dons a sooty apocalyptic cassock

of an unholy ghost

with the barbaric strategy

of its infantry

towards our infants

in the mythic proportions.

Copyright. Sreekanth Kopuri.

Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian poet, current poetry editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine, Alumni Writer in Residence, Athens and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry in University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, Heinrich Heine University and many others. His poems appeared in A Honest Ulsterman, Christian Century, Chicago Memory House, Heartland Review, Tulsa Review, A New Ulster, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry Centre San Jose, Athereon Review, Word Fountain, Ann Arbor Review to mention a few. His book Poems of the Void was finalist for the Eyelands Books Award Greece, 2019. He is the recipient of Immanuel Kant Award for his collection of poems on Silence 2020. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.