A million years

A million years

On whose shoulders perches the Eagle?
Who mourns through gusts of the eastern rushing winds?
A boy who grew up in dullness couldn't get out of it for the rest of his life
he felt gloomy on all evenings and smiled at the slightest of the raindrops
he saw the decades descend on the great delta and thought he would have a rising too;
the one that would pull him out of the clutches of nights and days
Grief is borne out of grief, he would think, and nothing else happens

So it was the rising that never came, and grief only paved the way for further grief
The valley surged with new delights
newer brigades took over the streets and the palaces
he scribbled, and he kept scribbling
to the rise of the valley and the tedium of his own
Everything will pass, he wrote; nothing will remain,
the tree that gave you the shelter
the you that took the shelter
the shelter that gave 
and the act of taking
There isn't a conundrum bigger than a symbol staring at you meaninglessly
No sadness is greater than what dwells in your heart
you are the life
In you lies the end

He walked along the shores with a peasant's feet
with a smell of the soil in his soul harvested by generations
toiling and dying in the fields
his hands carried the language of harvests
through his eyes flew the monsoons
the dreary summers
and the long hopeless waits
scattered along the earthen roofs
along the weary shadows of Neem

We were no warriors
our king taught us to fight
and so we fight
with our enemies
with our lives and our times
we plow through the fields and raise harvests of gold

He walked by the cities that rose to the skies
with a demeanor that mocked him
ridiculed him
and even threatened him
these glittering settlements of hollow people; with billows of wealth rising from its trenches
It's blue, sky-high sepulchers
shone deep into the pupils of his eyes
blinding him
pushing him back
mauling him, crushing him to death

This isn't the place for me; he thought  I belong to
the fields and the hills
and the river that flows through my heart
I walk down the road that passes through the planes
and the faraway lands
where truth lays scattered in feathers
of slain birds; of drained seas
 I walk into the cold
in to the dark grey blossoms;
the sounds sublime

 Who am I, my beloved? He asked
 to the skies, to the waters, to the winds
 Where am I headed?
 Decades have gone by, and he hasn't reached anywhere
 and the Godavari, she has flown past another million years.

--

Anant Dhavale

Copyright@ Anant Dhavale
Anantdhavale@gmail.com

First Published in the Open Road Review.