Tansy Troy
(Excerpts from With Earth as My Witness, Red River 2025)
Mist Mountain
i.m. of those who lost their lives in the Manali monsoon floods of 2023
Enchanted forest of fairies’ tales,
our village sits snug in you, level with cloud:
are we forgiven for feeling celestial?
Can it be helped if basking in half-sun
like waterlogged butterflies, we too recall flight?
Flooding the media,
every tale a torrent
of mud churned up as a charnel ground,
of souls wrangled out of depth.
We left a moment before the skies broke loose
and the mountain came crashing down.
Did She mean to tell us something?
To say stop! Gutting me,
wretched as a trout,
dissecting me as jadugars
saw in half their girls:
I am the Mighty,
Ancient Himalaya.
Carve me at your peril.
Fear the boom of your smooth road
plunging to the abyss
Horses of the Dilli Apocalypse
When the storm has finished wreaking
and everything’s reduced to rubble,
who cares for you, sweet horses
of the Dilli apocalypse?
When the ogres have ceased puffing
a noose of smoke round village huts,
squeezing life out of myriad lungs;
and the sun’s a sullen apology,
a rupee lost on the forsaken street of sky,
who will love and groom you then,
feed you succulence?
Every forgeable leaf is encased
in shrouded dust, grey mud.
Dammed and stinking Yamuna thick
with whitish scurf and scum.
Not a single vulture left to pick clean
your starved bones.
Jackals barely visible
amongst the detritus.
For now, you survive,
witnesses to holocaust.
When you’re gone,
may your proud ghosts bite,
pawing the earth,
impoverished dirt,
back to fierce life.