Saltwind
BREW Poetry Award Nominee - Open Category / by The Contributing Writer / 462 views
- Listing ID: 37060
- Poetry Author's Name: P Prashant Singha
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Poem:
Gaunt with hunger, hollow, dreary,
vision blurred, the body weary,
through the thorn and through the silence
where no kindly voices came.
No sound but echoes—bleak, unyielding.
No shape but shadows, strange, concealing.
And there—
a creature, writhing, breathing still,
its anguish bending to the will.
The rifle raised.
A single tremor in his pulse.
The silence urged:
“End it now—
the law of fang, the law of claw.”
He turned aside, though hunger ached;
the mother’s breath was thin, yet stayed.
The children clung where blood unshaped
the ground with grief he could not slay.
He stumbled shoreward, hollow, burning,
thirst a fire that gnawed like flame;
the sea lay gleaming, vast, unyielding—
a cruel salvation, cold, untamed.
He drank. The salt cut raw, deriding;
his throat convulsed, his body reeled.
The waves replied with endless chiding,
their hollow laughter never healed.
He fell to his knees,
and the waves gave him only their endless roar.
Yet from his breast, a whisper rose—
a question cast upon the world:
“World, O world, if I showed kindness,
mercy midst my own great blindness—
will you ever mirror mercy,
be as gentle as was I?
Or shall mercy be my ruin,
charity my own undoing,
while the strong consume the gentle,
while the weak alone must die?
Shall I die for sparing hunger—
shall the world be kind as I?” - Poet's Bio: P. Prashant Singha is a poet from India whose work explores memory, solitude, time, and the quiet beauty of overlooked places. His poetry seeks meaning through stillness, landscape, and the lives of ordinary moments. An avid reader of fantasy, he is currently working on his debut fantasy novel, Veyrn. His work has appeared in Phylum Press.
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