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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