It Is Dark Here ~ Sarah Das Gupta

I am running my fingers

through the furred dusk.

Light blindfolded,

cannot find the key.

Now at last the smallest

of chinks has appeared,

the walls of the dam

have been pierced.

Flashes of torchlight,

in unpredictable sequence

light up the mothy darkness.

Exercise books, satchels,

morning prayers, music 

drifting across misty

playing fields

awakes the ear of the past.

The dead feel their way

through the dusk.

They struggle for breath,

like fish emptied from a creel

on a cold quayside.

My father in his old mac 

is ploughing the twenty-acre field.

The rich earth turns,

noisy seagulls form a foaming wake,

above the dark waves.

My husband is listening to Bach.

As the violin soars unbearably,

he wipes away a tear.

Now the horizon is fading.

Now it is no more

than a faintly pencilled line,

the very edge of memory.

It is dark here.