Pratik : Pratik Special : Yuyutsu Sharma's New Poem, "My heart is in the tunnel tonight"

My heart is in the tunnel tonight

Yuyutsu Sharma

My heart is in the tunnel tonight

as feral dogs, rain-soaked and hungry,

survivors of the glacial deluge

scamper over the ravaged riverbeds

sniffing for bodies buried

beneath the soggy surface of Mother Earth.

My heart is in the tunnel tonight

as they wait in the pitch darkness,

flimsy films of their frantic breaths flicker

– a reminder – life, it’s nothing but quicksand

of time, an abrupt mudslide of

the agony of their grueling lives in yellow number helmets

and damp gumboots stretched into horrid hours

sinking towards ultimate oblivion.

My heart is in the tunnel tonight

where they sleep in the blind belly of the whale,

lifespans suspended in a hysterical wait,

a last-minute revelation of

the dying flames within their bodies.

My heart is in the tunnel tonight

where they wait for an anguished screech

from the other end, a familiar voice,

stalling the road to the living world,

an explosion obliterating the wall

that blocks the passage to survival.

They wait for the sound of a nail thrust into

the wall of mudslide and debris,

a revelation that would tear open the dark

despair boiling within and releasing a river of light

into the belly of the beast.

They wait for a thud of human feet,

bodies dangling from a grid of ropework,

to bring in water, fire, food, and a sight of a clean,

clear, star-spangled sky.

My heart is in the tunnel tonight;

it sees a figure in his warm bed

back home on the ledge of a high hill,

looking out of his small wooden window

at the sheen of a shimmering sofa of snow,

the blue river singing in the quiet canyons below,

a night suffused with the smell of roasted

soybeans and warm millet wine, his legs stretched

on his soft bed, his right arm bent

to prop his head, a deity lying in a moment

of eternal repose, exhausted after floundering

in the depths of an underworld, just risen from

the ocean of life’s deepest, safest sleep.

Yuyutsu Sharma is a Himalayan poet, editor, and literary curator, and the author of eleven poetry collections. Described by The Guardian as a “world-renowned Himalayan poet,” he has read and taught poetry and creative writing across North America, Europe, and Asia. He currently curates the Himalayan Literature Festival and Writers Workshop in Kathmandu and edits Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.

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