Smelling Arctic Weather

by Ankur Betageri (April 2020)
 
 

Eclipse, William Baziotes, 1959

I can finally smell

even the cold smell of steel

and feel it becoming
something warm inside.

Am I diesel or am I gas?

Am I a volcano of life?

The steel and the snow

become spring inside me.

The earth is all colours

the sky is full of light

white blue ochre and red

the night is full of stars.

A monument doesn’t move

but life—it dances and flies.

There is fire inside the glacier

there is ice in the fire—

but it’s love, more than anything else

which holds us all.

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Ankur Betageri is a poet, short fiction writer and visual artist based in New Delhi. He is the author of The Bliss and Madness of Being Human (poetry, 2013) and Bhog and Other Stories (short fiction, 2010). He teaches English at Bharati College, University of Delhi and is currently pursuing PhD in Philosophy from IIT, Delhi. His poetry has appeared in New English Review, Mascara Literary Review and London Review of Books.

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