Father by Yuyutsu Sharma

My hair go aflame
as you hiccup and breathe the last of this earth.

A grey wart appears on my forehead.

I clasp your cold palms
to feel blackout of your blood vessels.

On your chest, I burst
a silent pitcher of my life’s sleep

Darkness,
a savage silence of Sunya’s eternal ocean.

I glisten your rubbery body
with honey, curd and milk of seven rivers;

a tear keeps rolling endlessly
on the naked wound of my secret grief.

For the last time, I hold
this face of yours in my trembling hands;

the blast of a wail
ravages sunlight of my faith.

On your body, I place
heavy logs damp from a history of vanquished hearths.

In the crack of your still mouth
I drop grain of a rainbow

and light the last fire
that shall blacken quiet pages of my youth.

I hit the centre of your skull
aflame in the sputtering pyre

to ignite a bejewelled passage to eternity.

On the flooded banks of the Ganges
I knead your limbs all over again;

I make your head
heart, hands, life-veins, lines of your fate.

From the mantras of my breaths
I feed hunger of your blood vessels

and see you go alone
along the blazing fields of The Garuda Purana

eating crumbs of the blessed food
lost in the memories of my childhood

when once you had lifted me up
in the fragrant stretch of the blue hillside air

and probably for the first time
in life, smiled…


From Annapurna Poems