This poem is cold

This poem is cold
it is how people must have felt walking barefeet
in Siberian ice looking for the fire in their bodies
or perhaps, how peasants in Vietnam must have dreaded
the flash of napalm leaving nothing besides ashes
it feels like a patriot lost inside a gulag
wondering if his country finally wrote him an elegy
it writes itself in the language of something imperfect
finding lacunae in the sleeplessness of its tempests
This poem is cold
it is how people walk among the dead looking for life
in the cataclysms of field hospitals in a war torn countryside
or perhaps, how the spirit of slaves must have fragmented
in market places, in bazaars, in streets with Colonial names
it tries to give itself a name, it tries to bridge tears and fears
reason murders romance, rivers run into a seismic seance
it has feet but it cannot walk, it has a mouth but it cannot talk
this poem is cold, it is stringing heartache into a song.
© Jaspreet Mann

Melancholy, a sculpture created by Romanian artist Albert Gyorgy at Lake Geneva, Switzerland, portrays the void that grief leaves us with.