Underground

UndergroundBlank mountain sky,Dark matter below.The moment clear and blackAs element..A voice rings from the other side,Telephone on dark wall –Pitch and bitumen.What are your exact coordinates?.A long breath, a sigh.A gruff voice –Looking for fish eye in swirling water.One who talks less, works more.A voice that does not tell stories..We shovel our heads looking for an answerFutile lessons of geometryNever learnt at school..Someone grimaced – in dark humour:Somewhere so deep you never can reach,Before being hushed, by the rest of us..92 degrees. Someone else spoke out,A guess. He could well be counting stars.East or west?.Silence..No point sending them the wrong wayIn a circle..There was still a triangle of comfortThe waters hadn't seeped in,We dangled, fingers and toes, on the lastOf those perches. The wall held firm..Miners all,Stuck in a world of no tomorrow..The gods will arrive, we whispered,Lead us children to tomorrow….Finally, finally,Hope arrives, in cranes and planes,Voices muffled, mumbles and grumbles.The dark earth echoing..We were scooped up, one by one,We lay in the common dust..Later,A wise man, one of us, but who had seenGiant wheels move,In earth and sky,.He saidThey always knew,Where we were..They could see us from a great bird in the skyHow our destinies hung, like bats upside down,On the black wall..But they still wanted to know..Why?.We said we didn't know. We also asked:How can the great bird see what's inside earth?.He had no reply..This was like throwing pebbles in the water..We were asking questions like our kids who go to school,And tumble on the red sunset earth..How many stars? They are….He said our questions smoke like a forest fire.All he knew, was what we all knew..We felt bad, being in the middle of not knowing.No one knew – anything. Only the elephant remembered..We knew those big men in Dilli, inThe dry dust of Dilli, swim different..What we didn't know – was – what we didn't know.Watching those distant stars we call our neighbours,.Like the birds at our doorstep. Like morning..* * *.Visiting Hours.Feeling drips through the nightFaces scream silence,Patient as the last wall to fall.Make way for the wounded, they need places.We the livingSeeking joy in a heartbeat's murmurThe storm clearingThe poor doctor, so troubledI left my heart with him.* * *.21_ _.The waters swellingHead above weather,We backstroke glacial,The long ambling reach,All time ours..Ruined buildings, silent witness.Someone whispers: Manhattan.We enter the fifty-first floor through a window,Wriggle out dark like fishes.A scientist among us murmurs,Digging up history:We knew this for a hundred years Yet nobody did anything..We keep swirling, mermaids of theFuture. Earth is a forlorn shore.Soon we will touch the skyAnd wade our dreams with those distant stars..~ Amlanjyoti Goswami's poems have appeared in publications in India, Africa, UK and USA, including in the recent anthology 40 under 40: An anthology of post-globalisation poetry (Poetrywala, 2016). He grew up in Guwahati and lives in Delhi.