'The Song of the Cicada': A Poem by Sunil Sharma

THE SONG OF THE CICADA

The forest vibrates

With a deep humming sound

That clearly overpowers the senses

Of the startled passers- by;

It is so eerie here!

The loud buzz filters through the vertical thickets

Of gnarled trees,

Tall sentinels

Stripped and still,

In this time of the year,

On both sides of

The serpentine highway in the middle

Of the dull brown-coloured jungle;

The bleak landscape comes suddenly alive,

For the curious child, peeping out of the

Window of the pricey car, speeding up the sharp incline;

It is as if thousands of bees had been released abruptly

On the dry wood and parched-up plain, ceaselessly chorusing

In a long monotone that won’t subside,

The haunting orchestra being performed by the swarms of

The dog day cicadas that are

Invisible to human eye, but very persistent in their collective

Calls for their mates of the species,

That can be heard for a mile;

The music is so strange, and, loud,

Pierces the quiet of the mid-summer idyllic scene

Witnessed from a Mumbai highway

Running through that last forest remaining.

---

Sunil Sharma is Mumbai-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 19 published books: six collections of poetry; two of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, eight joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, one joint poetry collection. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award (2012). His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015.

Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA: http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html

For more details, please visit the blog: http://www.drsunilsharma.blogspot.in/