Tuesday, March 21, 2023

A Million Years ( edited)

 On whose shoulders perches the eagle? 

Who mourns through gusts of eastern rushing winds?


A boy who grew up in dullness could never escape it

gripped by a melancholy

too great for his little heart


But the band marched on

he watched decades descend on the great delta,

hoping for better days -

an ascent of his own


Grief is borne out of grief

and nothing more occurs


The valley surged with new delights

newer clans took over the streets and the

capitalist mansions of hallowed democracies


But his rising never arrived


He wrote, and he kept writing

To the rise of the valley and his own ennui


Everything shall pass 

Nothing will remain :

the tree that gave you shelter, 

 the 'you' that took the shelter, the shelter that gave, 

or the act of taking. 

there is no greater conundrum,

than a meaningless wait,

no sadness bigger than what dwells in your heart

you, the tiny island of life

in you, revolves the end


He walked with a peasant's feet,

with smells of soil in his soul

through his eyes flew the monsoons, the dreary summers

the toil of generations – scattered along the sparse shadows of Neem



We were no warriors; our king taught us to fight.


Cities – glittering settlements of hollow people in their

grim, sky-high sepulchers of opulence


Cities – the urban barrens of wealth and dust and smoke

they mocked him,

Pushed him back – crushed him to death


Never the truth – and the truth lays

scattered in feathers of slain birds

sullen backroads covered in blood and soot


He walked into the cold, dark gray blossoms


"Who am I, my beloved?" he asked the universe

"Where am I headed?"

decades have passed, and he hasn't reached anywhere,


And the Godavari, she

has flown past another

million years.


-

Anant Dhavale

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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 dullne...