Saturday, March 5, 2016

CHITRAVATI

She flows by
The east of the City of Peace;
Or, once she was a river,
Running over the entire bed
From source to destination,
Washed the shores of grime
With her cool compassion.
But now she’s a name, a shadow,
A scarred stretch of wild growth,
And half burnt human bones.

Once He came here,
Day after day, and His soft fingers
Dug up sands for hot delicacies,
Charged deities, bands of love and hope,
To plant a new life in a dug up heart,
Blueprint for a new resurrection.
She saw it all, and her rippling waters
Sang duets with the wind
Which joined her in rare ecstasy.
He called them for a picnic,
For a dialogue on Nothing,
Or to mirror himself
In the heart of Chitra which stood still.
When He stepped into her bed
She caught His soles
In her swirling fingers, and tickled them,
And when He stepped out,
She carried the touch all the way
To multiply green growth.

She is clogged, dried, and forgotten now;
Somewhere they cut her veins
To steal her blood, and
A heartless city of brick and mortar
Hungry for her sands
Scraped her ribs, stifled her
With its debris and drains,
With its noise and crimes,
With its frozen devotions.

We have no time to hear her tales,
We have no ears to hear her groans,
We have no eyes to see
How a river of overflowing life
He planned with His liquid love
Is fast losing herself in a desert.

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