Under Ocean Beds by Sneha Subramanian Kanta

For Eurydice

You swam in tears of the Furies

eluding epiphanies of mourning;

the elegy lingers thwarted in corners,

deep in underwater mattresses

where everything porous dissolves.

The sea is unyielding, unlike earth

turnips and foliage float over coasts

hidden by folds of rupturing tides.

Above, we are all left with wars,

unbridled in cacophonies 

unlike the density of withering.

All that blooms is not evolution,

you, amid the sticky barnacles

tether gulfs within the Underworld

know the breadth of bones. 

When Orpheus retreated his feet

within the expanse unknown,

passing ancient civilizations;

in oars from the Byzantium epoch

he sailed through like sand in fire,

remade into quasi-portions.

The legs do not know the way,

mindful of their own skill. 

Soaked in thorns then; he made

his way to daylight, your vision

disappearing like granules of sand

he tried to hold too tightly in his palm.

When not conjuring axioms for the anthropocene, Sneha Subramanian Kanta observes the residuals over coasts. Her poem 'At Dusk with the Gods' won the Alfaaz (Kalaage) prize. An awardee of the prestigious GREAT scholarship, she reads for her second postgraduate degree in England.