“The Wall Is A Horoscope” by Priyanka Sacheti

The sun is in a black mood today:

a viscous coal corona

extending this way and that.

Hapless planets, meanwhile, 

entangled in their own dramas,

pleading desperate solace from 

the distant stars.

 

But this is the ultimate truth:

for all their light,

these constellations

cannot be consolations.

 

They are but broken mirages

in an ink desert,

ideas banished from a country

which did not permit 

them to exist.

And so they now haunt 

this desolate land,

searching high and low 

for a home,

a bed, a desk, a teacup

to call their own

only to find 

 

nothing.

 

The sun has heard for long

the stars’ songs of lament, 

their restless footsteps,

knowing better than anyone else

their exquisite loneliness. 

But this foolish new pink planet,

alas, it knows nothing yet.

 

The days are still short there

and the nights languorously long,

still finding their color.

Stars thickly clot the sky,

bestowing silver ribbons of promise

and by that fickle light,

the innocent planet dreams, 

 

this glorious big new rose

in a summer green garden

beneath a bare blue back sky,

setting the leaves on fire:

the stars somewhere in that sky too,

with their invisible, benevolent presence.

 

Inside an empty room,

a teacup shivers in a bar of sunlight,

the porcelain roses blushing red.

In that singular moment, 

years of untarnished innocence,

the prospect of endless hope.

 

Priyanka Sacheti is a writer and poet based in Bangalore, India. She grew up in Sultanate of Oman and has previously lived in United Kingdom, and United States. She has been published in many publications such as Guardian, Literary HubHyperallergic, and Popula with a special focus on art, gender, diaspora, and identity. Her literary work has appeared in The Brown OrientBarren, Popshot, BerfroisThe Lunchticket, and Jaggery Lit as well as various anthologies, the most latest one being, March 2020, a collection of poems written in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. She’s currently working on a poetry collection and a nonfiction book.

 

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