Hanging on the stalk of time, 
She with curving mango cheek
Meek for the plucking 
Waits by the 
westfacing door
to watch the evening reel home 
with still unbloodied fists 
to smash into the night 
and purple it with dreams

Vasantha Surya’s Poetry

The Stalk of Time

The Stalk of Time (Cre-A Publications) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1985

A Word Between Us

A Word Between Us (Sandhya Publications 2003)

Poems

 Flood

This flood is not of storms and turbulences

but of a steady seeping

over days of ceaseless rain

ignored as but the discharge

of an over-heavy season.

Drop by drop it has gathered

in tomorrow’s reservoirs

until this moment's breach.

Spilling, it has filled all shallows.

Time’s river, swollen past containing

laps at the doorstep,

flows silently over the sills

of glances, skyward and seaward turned,

for signs of cyclones and tidal waves.

These are not wind-blown rains

whose flailing but quickly-wearied arms

knock down houses that rise again, groaning

upon their own rubble, break off trees

whose wailing stumps grin green

at sight of sun.

This flood is not importunate.

It does not clamour, or threaten.

But it will enter.

Once within, the creeping damp will rot

all bricks, beams, barricades,

dissolve all record and reminiscence

to settle down as silt

in fresh deltas, where the river meets

the ardent surf, and breeds

new growths, nourishes new populations.

****

Forecast

Tomorrow there will be no sun.

The clouds we have seeded

Are bearing fruit.

The whirlwind we have summoned up

We cannot put back into

Time’s broken bottle.

Flung into trackless space

We shall not see our way

Even by the best light

Of our brightest books.

The last of the senses

To give up the ghost

Will be the tongue, silenced

By the taste of ashes

As the bombs explode.

Our fate? It’s too soon to say.

If know we must, it could be

That we’re on our way

To circumambulate some other solar fire.

For we are, after all, survivors.

When death has wrenched from us breath’s final gust,

We still shall clench in burning fists

An irreducible ember of desire.

But for now, the picture’s clear:

It’s ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.