The Dance of Death / A Cruel Spring by Sarah Das Gupta

The Dance of Death

Drums beat, wildly, madly,
echoing grimly among the green hills.
In the distance forest trees
lashed by a titanic storm,
bend in obeisance to the gods
of a savage Spring.

In a circle, young girls dance,
at first their steps slow, graceful.
Bare, slender feet leave
soft, momentary footprints.
The drum beat quickens, darkens.
The dancers, captured, controlled
by the demands of the music,
quicken their footsteps
in the whirling hysteria of the violins.

One lone girl remains.
Faster, faster the music rushes
A crazy orgy, an insane tempo,
her feet no longer touch the turf.
Long, dark hair, blown and tortured
by the rising wind.
The dancer becomes a circle,
a whirling flash of colour and light.
a pattern, an emblem,
a dying sacrifice to Spring.

* Stravinski’s ballet ‘The Rite of Spring’ was first performed in Paris on 29th May, 1913 amid riots among some of the audience. It concludes with the Dance of Death.

A Cruel Spring

 

Water rushes, angrily, cruelly,

crashing jagged boulders

against the soft, green banks.

Red clay colours the waters.

Now a stream of blood

dashes onward.

 

In forest glades

beneath the tangled roots

of oak and beech,

Death Cap, Funeral Bell,

fairy toadstools

to lure the unwary.

 

The elusive shapeshifter, hare,

runs through the bramble thickets

where sharp thorns hide

under new, green livery. 

Beneath the sparkling

woodland pond

thick, black sludge

lies in ambush.

 

Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from Cambridge, UK who enjoys writing poetry when it is getting dark and she can just see the bare branches of the trees and hear the river flowing quickly just below the window.

Autumn Dusk / All Souls' Day 1400 AD by Sarah Das Gupta

Autumn Dusk

An empty house,
darkness floods
the ground floor.
Ghosts return to sleep
in the fading light
of an autumn evening.
Dead voices lurk
among the motes
floating in the last shaft
of sunlight.
Faint notes of a piano
caught in the moment,
to be played and replayed
in vacant, dusty rooms.

All Souls' Day 1400 AD

 

Spirits of the dead return,

Robin Goodfellow turns milk sour.

Hares, split-lipped, a source of fear.

Old hags with strange birth marks,

Burn in flames of cruellest red.

Toads, frogs and snakes bewitch,

Tombs open, the dead arise

Seeking revenge beyond the grave!

In stained glass men burn in hell.

The living seek a redemptive spell. 

 

 

 

Sarah Das Gupta lives near Cambridge, UK. She has also lived and worked in India. Her work has been published in 12 countries including US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, Croatia and Romania.

That Moment / Dark Familiars by Sarah Das Gupta

That Moment

Twilight creeps over the distant hills;
in the growing gloom three crows
perch on a ruined oak.
Its bare branches hang
like dislocated limbs.
Only the distant barking of a fox
challenges the menacing silence.

In the forest depths the half-light
flows among the straggly thickets,
where the hare passes
from this world to that other world
of spirits and the dead.
Wraiths of mist swirl round
the trunks of tall pines
whose topmost branches,
like severed heads,
are marooned in shadows.
This is that moment
waiting, waiting...




Dark Familiars

Old hags fly through history.
On the back of their brooms
the inevitable black cats.
Nine times witches change magically,
into sinuous feline form.

In mothy blackness,
cats’ eyes burn topaz,
blood-stained ruby.
Familiars whisper
secret chants.
Black rites lie
hidden in darkness.

Freyja, goddess of Death,
drives her chariot
over winter skies.
Her cats strain
in their harness.
They plunge and spring
through storm clouds.

By a fire of bright orange and amber,
with her hellish third nipple,
a witch is suckling her cat.
As light thickens and night falls,
the covens gather.
They fly over bleak moors
and freezing fens.
Satanic chanting echoes from caves,
magic dancing in moonlit rings.
Old women in lonely places
Cats, enigmatic night creatures
secret, silent familiars.
Predators, furtive, seeing the invisible,
they ambush their prey.

The split pupils, the glowing eyes,
the sudden hiss.
Feline serpents, memories of
Paradise lost.
Witches and cats both sad victims
The cruel flames torture and burn!
Familiars in life and in death.

Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from near Cambridge, UK who has taught in India, Tanzania and UK. her writing has been published in ten countries and many magazines including;'Paddler', 'American Poetry Review', 'Green Ink', 'Cosmic Daffodil','Waywords', 'Humana Obscura', 'Flora Fiction', 'Hooghly Review', 'Tangience' and 'Dipity' among others.