The Migratory Birds At Lake Chilika Poem by Sambit Panigrahi

How do I address your flocks? Ethereal globetrotters?
Wintry guests? Foreign birds? Peregrine birds?
O! What marvels of creation you all are?
Siberian cranes, Flamingoes, Ruddy Shelducks,
Painted Francolins, Red-necked Grebes...
What are your endless flights but multi-ethnic
harmonies displayed across the sky,
while stupefied humans watch in wonder!
O! What cosmic tenacity, what oceanic resolve
is there in your wings and eyes that dissolve
distances like shadows in the light!
Flocks after flocks, you roll in across the sky,
like a cosmic penumbra on the move!
On your feathers, rest the burden of endless skies.
In your claws, shrinks the vainglory of mountains.
In your ecumenical flight, dissolve the lakes and
highways and mountains like mere phantoms of Earth.
But with time's cruel summon, you fly back
home, following the same trajectory in the sky.
What memory! What sincerest response to duty!
What apt understanding of time's cruel vicissitudes!
But it's summer now and you have all flown away.
Trawlers and fishing boats sprawl around
like giant, ugly spiders crawling on sea-floor!
They emit oil and tar and filth and defile
the lake.
Empty is the sky; and fewer are the clouds.
I wish you were all here again—Siberian cranes
and Flamingos and Glossy Ibises, and Laughing Doves...
I follow your endless trails of beauty
and translucence in vain, yet with delight and wonder.
I wonder what magical figurations of sublimity
you all were overflowing across endless stretches
of somber, dark horizons!
O migratory birds!
Gleeful emblems of beauty and grandeur!
Come flying from unknown distances and perch
on the calm waters of Chilika, like undone
memories always finding their ways back
into boundless terrains of wakeful minds.
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