Sneha Subramanian Kanta – Three Poems


Reflections on Intelligence and Reasoning: Before Spring Comes

Every year (the interlude
mortals are taught to define
in structures of intelligence)
when March comes, bursts
of flowers grow and I must

reflect on abundance, while
the idiosyncrasy of ignorance
is not left too far from thought.
(this is also a time most schools
reopen: a, b, c, d’s are taught)

What wisdom is distorted, that
we have ceased to hear, in the
mirth of birds and of brooks?
The flowers bloom and most go
unnoticed (the gardeners these
days are very few) and wither.

Where is peace, within doubts;
(artists only ask questions,
answers are unneeded mostly)
is it to be found lurking in a dark

corner where seaweeds grow and
the sun relentlessly beats, or in
alleys where moonshine spreads
over flowers which at morn bloom?

I have decided to stop and cease
this doing and undoing, and walk
on the heaviness of streets, (in grief
and joy, their meanings unknown)
and perhaps, perhaps make a life.



Last Autumn

the waif like branches of autumn tree boughs;

leaves swooped by the wind,
blades of brown grass,
all grew in somber shadows
until the dark, grief-stricken
shadows
purified into a black velvet midnight.
in your arms i found
the wisdom of yet unfounded worlds,
and withered trees outside stood
while your eyes unfurled secrets,

secrets that ever since have with me stayed:
the world comes in different colours,
of dawns of nights and days,
though since last autumn;
after the separation

and unison again
in the idle hours of absence
leaves on the ground
tell me that you are not far.
our dawn will come as it did,
our bodies will be drawn whole
like spring refills trees.



Quintessence

after sleep,
your eyelids

open and
close like

sunrises and
sundowns.
how wafts
of breeze —
transport
figments of
your essence
in fragments

times you
are not here.
i read long
passages
printed on
pages of long
novels, take
long walks

and linger
upon the
concreteness
of roads, and
the black and
white of ink —
repeatedly —
until our
breaths breathe
as close rhymes.


 

Author’s Statement on Beauty

There are sublime connotations underlining the word: there is indeed beauty in truth, an antithetical semblance for a world priding itself on vanity. To me, all that is tangible and intangible but create energy, thought and emotion is beauty – hues of the sun dipping into a watery horizon, birds taking flight, the flutter of a lead shivering in the rain, the formative journey from being a caterpillar to butterfly, et cetera. There is beauty within the souls that read this material, in a baby’s first kick against your skin, in an act of kindness and everything else – one just needs to decipher in their imaginations, deeds and impressionistic tendencies among many more.


 

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a postgraduate student at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom and has been awarded the GREAT scholarship. Her work has appeared or is to appear in Ann Arbor Review, Front Porch Review, Sahitya Akademi, and elsewhere.