The Coronapocalypse Will Be Televised Those aren’t birds you hear, just their corresponding holes in the sky. - ANSELM BERRIGAN Silence is never magical in this republic. We believe in procession, in utterance, in honouring the dead, not by shutting up for a minute, but by going into the street and beating a drum. This is how we greet grief. With rose petal and drink and dancing limb. We are not the type to sew our lips in protest, nor will we go mad if you string us upside down and expose us to the shrieks of dying rabbits. Our gods are in favour of cymbals. It’s the other thing that kills us—the field of uninterrupted grass, the on and on of nothing. How can you bear it? There have always been two kinds of people: those whose hearts can stand to live beside volcanoes, and those who write letters to the neighbours, asking when’s a good time to beat the carpets, and is it possible to tone it down on the piano? This funeral song is different. It asks for us to die alone, to step into a well with inflamed lungs, only to find you’re not in water, but drowning on dry land. So sure, we can bang our pots and pans from balconies, we can write notes of gratitude and send them out in air balloons, so those alive on other planets can witness our disintegration. Do they see how sad we are, how aghast? How we move as actors in a silent film, our movements wild and jerky. Do they laugh at the irony of our government’s title cards: “Breathe Easy!” & “Don’t Worry!” “Nothing’s Going to Tank the Economy!” Who thought the end would be so complete? We keel over and get up again, the mud on our knees too hungry to scream, an invisible orchestra of violins, directing us from the wings. — Tishani Doshi Sometimes, There Are Cyclones Come to the city of flowering neem. There’s a leaf here with your name in vermeil, and a salt-sprayed coast shot through with sunbeams. Bring me the rawnesses that wouldn’t heal through your strange wanderings, spinning crossroads that showed: home is never where you left it. Hold the truth, balanced by its antipode. I know what I’m asking you to forfeit. I didn’t promise prestige, only summers of smouldering bloom, though what we call ours is comprised of smoke, qualm, thirst and rumour. Yes, I’m drawing you here where there’s so scarce to praise in song. Sometimes, there are cyclones. Always, there’s my lantern heart, a lodestone. — Sharanya Manivannan Lockdown verse, as the name suggests, is a series consisting of poems introspecting, examining and reflecting on the times we are living in. The poets have very generously agreed to share their hitherto unpublished works. For this week, we have one poem from Tishani Doshi, poet and author of Small Days and Nights (2019). She had won the Forward Poetry Prize for her debut collection of poems, Countries of the Body (2006). The other one is by Sharanya Manivannan, poet and author of The Queen of Jasmine Country (2018).
