The Autumn Hues of India by Sreekanth Kopuri

The heat of Indian summer

put down to the earth’s magic

spell on the stretching bed of

the autumn foliage, under the

ripeness of the old mango tree

of my home where the mynas

do not complain against the 

gathering crows and the turmeric

-yellow Asian hornets, for it is

time to learn from the ripeness

of the fallen leaves where the

golden oriole hops on the russet

stretches of evening for ripeness

is all, searching the meanings of

winter’s bleakness with the

camouflaged wheatish mantis

joining hands, becoming the

atoms of the unfading life’s

heaped orange windfalls on the

honey bee-swarming pushcarts

along the red-soiled beauty of the

Machilipatnam streets, signing India.

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Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian English poet, Alumni Writer in Residence, Athens and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry and presented his research papers in University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, Heinrich Heine University and many other countries. His poems and research articles have been published in Christian Century, Memory House, Heartland Review, The Rational Creature, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry Centre San Jose, Underground Writers Association, Shot Glass, Word Fountain, A New Ulster, Synaeresis, Wend Poetry, Vayavya, Ann Arbor Review to mention a few. His book Poems of the Void was finalist for the EYELANDS BOOKS AWARD Greece, 2019. He is the recipient of IMMANUEL KANT AWARD for his collection of poems on Silence 2020. Kopuri did PhD in English from Sri Venkateswara University and Masters from Andhra University. He is presently an independent research scholar in Contemporary Poetry, Silence, and Holocaust poetry. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother teaching and writing.