The
Dreaming Rivers
The river searches its own pyre
reduced to a skeletal figure,
shores once witnessed rites
knew the joy of life and the pain of death.
When the sky made love with the river
transpired its azure hue into it,
we looked our faces in it,
washed our grief in its crystalline folds.
It swallowed our bitterness with no dregs
ferried us shore to shore on its wavy surface
took our hearts with it,
held a world within
and snoozed royally under moonlight .
It heaved, swelled up with wandering water
which sang to the hum of the earth,
an image in childhood stuck deep in my mind,
now shrunk to the bones like a child in famine.
Its soul gnaws and kneads with mood swings
sometimes serene, sometime fierce,
tells tales of choking with wastes and neglect,
yet mute it lingers, quite women-like.
Straddling between past and the present
rivers tread on old paths carrying their curse,
ringing in their ears long lost bustles
and dreaming to beckon past glories.
Sorrow
of the Soil
Sunrays,
steep and sharp
go
deep into the soil
chase
droplets hiding in depths
like
drunkards would
their
wives’ small savings in spice jars,
rivers
draw abnormal maps
of
nameless nations,
women
walk miles with pots
unmindful
of baking earth below,
migrating
birds return desperate
their
annual sojourn not being feasible.
Greens
go, rains elude, earth sears.
Looming
water wars taint relations
Failing
crops, falling hopes.
The
three-pronged demons
drought,
debt and despair
drive
farmers to death,
rivers
to rumours.
Would
it have been different
had
they not been named after women?