while Lahaina, Maui burns August, 2023
May I imagine the scene? Do you
agree? Coffee in the studio, light
streaming in, brushes and easel,
a multi-hued cat? But flames
are rising at five hundred yards.
Oh to leap beyond particulate
matter, to dream, go native
again, python wrapped round
banyan branch, peeping through
the window while monkey hops
over the ledge and books,
to the sugar bowl, scatters
the grains, attracting flies,
mosquitoes, the ubiquitous
roach. Paradise does not look
sweet. Fireball blows up history,
belief, certainty, and cars,
drivers burned at the wheel,
while thousands of miles
away as all birds fly,
by pure chance, living
on the mainland, in another
corner of the great expanse
of the once blue ball,
I try in vain to catch
and douse embers flying
this month’s perfect storm.
Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.