poem for april
weekly poem | april is the cruellest month
iBut First Dear Reader, A Note To You,
It’s 38 degrees Celsius in Bangalore and we’re officially in the middle of a heatwave as I’m writing this! Every year we bemoan that it’s hottest summer yet, and it seems to be true each time. Evidence of climate catastrophe is all around us; as the temperature soars, the city is also in the midst of a gruelling water crisis.
I think I know what T.S Eliot meant when he said ‘April is the cruellest month.’ And it’s only getting crueller. If you’re reading this from someplace equally hot (or hotter), then I hope you’re sitting in the shade right now. Let’s begin.
poem for april
our plants wilt in the shade
leaf-fragments
returning
to the slow earth
to die a little while.
these April deaths of our lives
these April days
heavy even in bloom
the old mango tree
weighed down with bruised fruit
bowing her face to the red earth
brushing
against the trembling lip of heat.
these April deaths of our lives
these April days
heavy even in bloom
I wanted to capture a feeling of something falling, moving through the heavy heat and touching the earth. I like to think that even in the middle of a heatwave, everything only dies ‘a little while,’ before becoming part of the larger aliveness of the earth and soil.
But still, even the soil is changed, polluted, drier than ever. It’s not just my house plants that are wilting, but crops across the world. In the first draft of this poem I wrote: ‘it must be alchemy / the way soil turns / to red dust / in hot summer’s fist.’
Here I was thinking of T.S Eliot again, how he wrote: ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’ And it’s true. All my climate anxiety is balled up into a fistful of dry earth, or tucked away into an exceptionally hot afternoon. Sometimes, this is what the poetry of the everyday is about: Ordinary things and extraordinary fears.
Before You Go …
Anyone else struggle with climate anxiety? And if you do, have you been writing about it? Talk to me in the comments!
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Finally, here’s what I’ve been loving on Substack recently:
I’ll be back with a new poem next week. Until then, take care.
Love,
Anagha
Yes I live in the State of Arizona- in the Sonoran Desert- currently we are in a beautiful bit of comfort. It is beginning though. Mornings are perfect and last until mid afternoon. The heat is starting
Earlier every day and the heat is lasting longer every night. My body can’t take the cold. The dry air and barometric pressure stays about the same here. But when the heat gets extreme it is hard on my body. I do my best to hang on to days like these. Even when I’m in pain. I always have to look from something to be grateful for, even when it hurts.
As for anxiety- yes crippling? Not as much as before. I have a gotten used to the mix of 2 meds which help. Still there are days I don’t leave my home - from either anxiety, pain or both.
The trembling lip could be quenched with a mango lassi and cool drink of barley water to nourish your next poems that capture the sultry heat vapors rising from red parched earth. I would like to send you cool rain from mountain tops to ease the water crises. I await a new poem knowing you have quenched your thirst for seeing life as it is with a view from the Himalayan mountains.