Amazon burns

Each flame licks a life

Each ember leads to strife

How will man survive?

From the meat roasted by the flames

That rise as if from Earth's insides?

The birds that no longer fly

Lie roasted, toasted, drained of colour.

The brilliant macaw with its plumes of blue and yellow, 

The golden monkey that leaps from tree to tree,

The green frog that hops,

The slithering snake that crawls

Now all lie in a heap

Under the dead burnt leaf.

70, 000 fires that cindered 

The green to a dun, dull grey...

Devoid of life

Like Mordor, the ground cries.

Will only the Orcs abide

The dead — can they rise?

During the last reckoning what will they say?

Childhood has ended and we hold the Earth in our sway?

The last child crumbles away...

Mitali Chakravarty's poetry has appeared online and as part of two anthologies, In Reverie (2016) and An Anthology of Indian Poetry in English (1984). This particular piece was published in Countercurrents.org in August, 2019.