My New Poem

The Forbidden…

Sleeping in abandoned sepulchers in the cemetery

Like a recollection of some faded dream on a freezing

Winter morning; tiny dew drops greet the fragile souls

Without a roof and the sky’s limitless vastness that welcomes fresh

Rays from behind the clouds…  

Morning has touched these vaults.

The recess of resurrection is over!

Creating collective experiences of shared values for humanity,

The incinerating flame of being discarded and many offences being

Turned into ashes build an illusion of life, living and death – animating

Years of sheltered solitude and vivaciousness alike!

Scarcity looms large across these fragile souls and few

Winter’s lone soldiers, who now welcome a delicate fragrance of steaming

Tea leaves, and huge temple bells that awakens the deities.

As sun wings its rays across empty lanes and behind tree leaves,

Fragility becomes vivid on these streets landscaping such souls, who

Gather their shaded, torned remains – and their weak torsos, yellowed o’er time!

Their blankets and strewn pieces of metal plates size up in the corner,

As dust is swept into dirty wide opened drains!

Here, some joggers electrifyingly cross such sight

Blinded away by such disquieting discomfitures…

Momentarily, the adults start debating on reasons of why and why not’s –

Benumbing our sensitivities over the sirens of Mosques and old notes from the

Sprawling Gurudwara, calling the faithful and such others fancying for their turn,

To submit themselves before the Divine – in this hour of calmness!

Roads radiate out with few travellers on their empty carts, and bicycles.

While serenity surrounds the crowd that slowly pace by to be within themselves.

So unchallenging, yet aesthetically drawn across from different

Shades of the muted silence of such fragile souls, as they move ahead

Clinging to their memories of the spaces left emptied o’er time and dust.

Nestled between two worlds that intertwines their dreary branches,

These forbidden souls celebrate the circle of life – forgotten, yet listed…

Here anonymity seeks solace of the abandoned!

Here time rebels into lanes and alleys!

Rajdeep Pathak

February 12, 2018