You emerge — from within darkness, your face

                                           sliding into light —

you squirm virus-like in a womb,

draped blood-red,                                       on black stage-floor.

                                           Around you, others swirl about

dressed as green algae,

                             like frenetic atoms

              under a microscope in a dimly lit laboratory.

Art mirroring life — reflecting the pandemic on stage.

 

Your hands palpitate,

                             as the sun’s own blinding yellow corona

cracks through the cyclorama.

              People leap about — masked, veiled.

                                                          You snare a man’s sight

with your fingers mimicking a chakravavyuh —

                             you are red, he is green, she is blue —

trishanku — life, birth, death —

                             regermination, rejuvenation, nirvana.

 

Everything on stage — as in life —

                                                          moves in circular arcs.

Irises close and open, faces veiled unveil —

              hearts love, lungs breathe — breathless.

 

Lights, electromagnetic —           knotted, unwrapped —

                             music pulsates, reaching a crescendo,

                                                                        then silence.

Time stops. Far away in the infinite blue of the cosmos —

              I look up and spot a moving white.

I see a white feather

                                           trying its best to breathe

in these times of breathlessness, floating downwards —

 

and as it touches the floor, in a split-second

everything bursts into colour, movement, the bols/taals

                                                          try to restore order,

rhythm,               both contained and free.

 

The backdrop bright orange,

                                           the silhouettes pitch-black.

As you embrace another humanform,

              the infinite journey of timelessness might seem

                                                                        inter_rupted,

but now is the moment to reflect and recalibrate

immersed in the uncharted seas, in the widening circles,

                             telling us —                      others matter,

the collective counts.

 

I examine minutely the striated strands

                             of the pirouetting feather, now fallen —

its heart still beating, its blood still pumping,

                                                          its white untarnished.

Life’s dance continues — with or without us —

only in the understanding of what is,

                                           is there freedom from what is.