USHA KISHORE

The Sarus Crane

The Sarus Crane refuses to believe

he is on the verge of extinction.

He measures life in a dance of amour,

he wraps his sweeping wings

around monsoon skies, their midnight

tips sketching cinereal silhouettes.

His grace is pre-destined; his windhover,

a lightning requiem; his slow drift, a

twilight symphony. I talk to him

in Sanskrit, but he insists on Prakrit,

which translates his name, lake bird.

He does not care for Latin, Grus antigone,

which chronicles his bare neck.

The Sarus Crane refuses to believe

he is on the red list. I tell him,

his wetlands are long buried

under swathes of paddy fields.

He tilts his crimson head

in arabesque lift. He flutes in

disdain; he is sanctified

by the Divine Bird, poetry

birthed in his lovelorn chassé.

I tell him he revels in myth.

He trills in scorn; he is worshipped

by five-god votaries, who invoke him

in gliding light. I tell him, the ghost

moon has eclipsed his silvered down.

The Sarus Crane shrouds his precious clutch

with sheaves of myrtle grass. He trumpets

in treble to his mate, who flew away in

a mistral of feathers. He would starve

to death than pair again. When rain kindles

fire on air, he dreams of winging his soul

in a waltz of seduction, of whistling a storm

in immortal fens, where time stands still;

where water is earth and earth, water.

Usha Kishore is an Indian born British writer and translator, resident on the Isle of Man.  Usha is internationally published with three collections of poetry, the latest being Immigrant  (Eyewear, 2018) and a book of translations from the Sanskrit. Usha completed her PhD in Postcolonial Poetry with Edinburgh Napier University, this year.  www.ushakishore.co.uk 

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