Two Poems by Sreekanth Kopuri

TEA FOLK, MACHILIPATNAM

Another milk-white morning 
pours into the town’s tea-dusty 

bazaar. Folk spilled here and there, 
warming up in the endless melting
 
pots along the bazaars with pinches 
of sugary granules at tea shacks with 

spoonfuls of tea-dust-like guffaws
and giggles of the Indian brown faces

suffusing into the milky morning
boiling with the fragrance of native

exchange of pleasantries with the 
warm sips of the cardamom tea.



AN ILLUSION

It’s the harvest season again Sona! the rice 
you’ve grown is safe in the husky fold 
of a wheatish smile on its sunburnt 
face in warm stillness broken by the 

raucous greed of a strange raven in 
its glossy black coat waits for your 
favour spread on their apricot faces. 
The discordant note of its endless 

impressive pursuits for the preserved 
grains of your life will, I fear, soak you 
with its royal black attire that draws you 
to its enticing fabric, fabricated calls that

appeal with confidence and dignity. 
Keep your hand still and the encounters 
with an empty smile giving it only the
silence, a lesson, a shadow across its way.