Teddy Bear on the War Front and other poems by Sukrita Paul Kumar

In an intensely violent world, poetry provides some solace and understanding too of the senseless, the absurd and the downright evil

Teddy Bear on the War Front

Teddy bear the survivor

An abandoned teddy bear (Shutterstock)

sat presiding over

the rubble of civilization

a debris of fun and play

teddy sat over the

cat’s skeleton

her bones in a pattern

a curled cadaver

couches and cushions

in smithereens

missiles shredding homes

screams shearing walls

throats as nozzles

shooting shards

teddy bear the lone survivor

no arm around him

the skin jellied

his gaze fixed on carnage

white buttons gyrate

in unseeing eyes

teddy’s fur spiked in shock

unyielding bristles puncture

a million hearts into

frothy oceans, salty

tsunami of teddy bears

march into war zones

in search of toddlers

Aleppo, Syria, on January 22, 2025 after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. (Shutterstock)

Aleppo, Syria

Inside Al-Madina Souq

the market that once glittered

with silver coins and golden gifts,

chocolates and popcorn

lingerie and skirts

all lay toppled from

somersaulting shopping trolleys

caught between

cannons and rocket warfare

Mounds of dried tears

stuck in hollowed eyes

gape into the stony void

of the tomb

rosy cheeks

split by bombs and explosives

wrapped in dust and scum

plead for the kiss of the lover

the lap of the mother

In the web of cracks

on the walls of the

citadel of Aleppo, the piercing

screams of children vibrate

into the alleys, like lightening

up and down

and sideways, with no relief

in sight

Urbicidal

said someone…

and the Great Mosque

choc ‘o block with paralyzed prayers

of rebels

and soldiers

The rest, crowds of

left over women,

men and children

fleeing with their prayers

rolled up in their sleeves

babies and bags on their backs

they float

do not come ashore

they walk, they run

do not arrive

they alight planes

don’t land

they are embalmed

and remain entombed

they are refugees

forever afloat

outside their homes

far away from Aleppo

where their passports and

identity cards burn in bonfires

A diya on the Ganga (Shutterstock)

War Fears

The world is coming

to an end, O Ganga

not with an earthquake or floods

not with a sudden jolt

but as a gradual spread

of fear, starvation, darkness

the deadly virus of a grinding war

has struck

Say, if you have a solution

O Ganga

give us signs

for the survival of the species

or do you too wish

for our extinction

just to breathe afresh?

*

With the inner eye you lent me

O Ganga

I saw God with a stethoscope

carrying the sick and the old

across your turbulent chest

Your waters stilled

ghosts rise

from your depths

to dance on your glassy surface

Leaving no footprints

for others to follow

O Ganga, say, will He reach

your shore across

leaving us behind?

Poet Sukrita Paul Kumar (Courtesy the subject)

WARTIME VIGNETTES

IIt’s dementia…

For grandmother

it’s a staccato war

ends each day and

starts the next morning again

it is a re-wind

to World War II

the wake of bombing

kills people again eighty years later

*

pregnant with deadly nightmares

Moskva the missile cruiser sank

the Black Sea swallowed all bombs

stuffed with a thousand deaths

*

bullet marks on the walls

are remnants of war

people in homes behind

lie unhealed

*

ghosts born of bombs

are stripped of death

sans the mortal attire

they live on to haunt

*

For a handshake

with djinns and genies

enter the forsaken bunkers

bodies have fled

to join the

dance of death outside