Talking to Digant V

I don’t know how to pass my days.
I keep staring out the window
to tell the crows of your absence
but they refuse to eulogize you.
They continue to make their nest
with twigs and copper wire.
Everything wants to spring,
to live out its deepest impulses:
the trees, rosy trumpets, gulmohar,
all frothing with pollen,
mussaenda, castor bean,
the dogs chasing each other
in the park breeze, the hens
warming up eggs
under their haunches.
Digant, I want to cry
but the earth’s so goddamned cheerful.
When I stand under the gold of an amaltas,
I feel silly if I’m weeping.
I don’t want to enjoy spring.
But I do, I do, and I’m repulsed
by this need for beauty.

Kunjana Parashar is a poet from Mumbai. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Prose Poem, ASAP|art, What Are Birds?, SWWIM Every Day, Columba, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2021 Toto Funds the Arts award for poetry and the 2021 Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Prize.