I could not bury your breath
under the splendour of delight, -
Shattered dreams got nourished forever
Like tulips lying dormant
in their bulbs underneath,
year after year.


I have preserved your light
like an intense pain in a plight
throughout these serene years of harmony, -
until that morbid dawn,
when the waving, grinding and rolling
of the devouring storm was gone.


Today's murmuring waves forgot
yesternight's destruction,
its devastating strumming
on the placid string of creation.
Today's playful waves stagger
and fall splashing like an infant laughter.


Among the corpses and half sunk wrecks
I found signs of desperate urge
for clinging to life.
The sea breeze held boundless cries, -
The still-born morn awaited decay -
I stumbled on the heaps of lost fear, loses and strife.


With a delicate pink hope
I spotted the rock, where once
we did depart
with a heavy heart,
yielding to a promising honoured life.
There, on the huge black rock lay
a lifeless child, that had been washed away, 
and beside it I've seen to strive
its wrinkled granny quivering alive.

© Kakoli Ghosh

Published in “Poems for Haiti”, an anthology from South Africa, edited by Dr. Amitabha Mitra (2010)