Crevasse
by Gopal Lahiri / February 15th, 2026
In the middle of the line, you write about the war
How the enemies tear down the white flags
Tomorrow they will dance at the city centre
but no headlines can be seen in the evening paper.
A slum boy stands smiling in the unseasonal rain.
It’s the imagination with which you perceive the world.
Those ripped out bodies try decoding directives,
listening to the walls filled with moss, there is no
perfect end to the freedom and hope, the slogans
choked to a silted canal, narrower than a river.
Why ever people want to move out in distress?
windows chase butterflies in contrary designs.
Aging unsettles into streams of memoir, a passing
voice mentions- nowhere to go except in the abyss.
Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 32 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry and prose are published across more than one hundred fifty journals and anthologies globally His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 17 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021and Best of the Netfor poetry in 2025. He has received
Setu Excellence Award, Pittsburgh, US, in poetry in 2020. He has been conferred First Jayanta Mahapatra National Award on literature in 2024 for his significant contribution in Indian English Writing. His poems were included in the Penguin Book of poems on Indian Cities.
Read other articles by Gopal.
This article was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.
