Saturday, October 14, 2017

Last poem from Annapurna Poems: Fourth Edition being released next week

Silence

The moment I enter the Valley, nausea thrashes my well-being. A chill seeps into my bones and I close my eyes. Near Annapurna glacials, I had remained quite cosy, next to a warm hearth. Right away, I regret my return to the slum of human destiny, an ashtray of our shattered dreams.

At last, I open my eyes to see Buddha’s kingdom suffering like a snail. Where are the villages of huge brass bells? What fumes have filled the spacious squares of rituals? What vehicles have trampled fields of fragrance?

Overnight, a demon has sucked the fragrances of this once an exhilarating valley, leaving it deserted —  wrinkled and crumpled sheet of a newspaper.

In a fraction of a second, its century of silences has been shattered eternally. Without a regret or guilt.

I open my eyes to enter this labyrinth of nightmares, nonplussed that the floral fields I celebrated in my dreams never actually existed.

I open my eyes to discover that the first casualty of this expansion, silence. A cadence of a melody I’d carried like a sacred song all these years, a nucleus of my water wells. Has it been unscrupulously misplaced and forgotten in the schemes of the cities?

Awestruck, I feel all these days and weeks, I’d remained at ease when I was alone on the mule paths. But the moment I entered the city, I lost them all, syllables of the secret song that I hummed all these times.

It’s in the cities that I’ve spent the saddest moments of my life.


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