Nine Feet Under The Water Level
Sankar Roy
Near Audubon Park,
the Mississippi takes a surprise turn.
A musician jostles with his sax
to echo the river's ripples.In the market cafe,
the band boys play Louis Armstrong.
Tsunami faces pour down from silent TV.
What genius does it take to ricochet
a killer wave?And what is jazz?
As Louis says, 'One would never know.'
The hornbill stalks the evening ferry
from a safe height.Why did Burroughs
choose to live on the other bank?
Is it situated on a higher elevation?
Holding my daughter's hand,
I walk through the flea market nine feet below
the water level.Trinkets sparkle
on the vendors' stands.Mardi Gras masks lie
over the plaster sheet like flood victims.
If death is the greatest equalizer,
then music comes next.
I tap my toes to the beat of the rappers
who perform in the dusk
behind St.Louis Church.
Palmists foretell futures in the gas light.
Christmas wreaths adorn the sides
of horse buggies.The woman mimicking a French bourgeois lady
stands
holding a hand fan.The prostitute wrapped in leather awaits her
clients
like the Night Goddess.
Far way on the city podium,Tulane kids
perform a Greek tragedy.I feel the need
to have my face portrayed by the caricaturist
Poem Courtesy
of "Only the sea
keeps: Poetry of
the Tsunami"
Pictures:
HumanityAshore
Sankar Roy, Is an engineer, MBA, web artist, poet,an immigrant from India,translator
of T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land into the Bengali language.Mr.Roy has
completed two book-length manuscripts of poetry.He is currently working on
his book-length autobiographical poem,The New Book of Genesis,and
translating Allen Ginsberg and Derel Walcott to Bengali.Sankar is the associate editor
of this anthology, Only The Sea Keeps.
