when half of the hillock, my senior most friend
in my neighborhood, revered as a local god,
as a new god on the old Mount Olympus,
as the Mount Govardhan in Vrindavan,
cracked as the severe heart attack, slid down
many flocks of birds, darling fellows of my senior friend
started crying in panic
in the sky
as tears falling from the descending
and disintegrating Heaven
the birds did this as they do in earthquakes;
the throat of the rivulet, regarded as the much cared
beautiful daughter of my friend descending from
its peak, dancing in neighboring woods and lands
as the Ganges descends from the Himalayas
and does in the plain,
and composing the rhymes on the back of the wind
flowing on the chest of seas,
choked, and the lifeline of the land was broken
into uncompromising points on the unconsolable bosom
of the soil;
the entangled wilderness fell in irreversible silence
a reaction never seen in the world of elements
in the decisive moment
my men living around
saw smokes and heat performing duet
and composing elegies in the honor of final cataclysm
they neither flew in the sky
nor hided in their nests
they did nothing
they were waiting
for final cataclysm one needs nothing
but the living has to be the dead
O my senior most friend, stay for us
even with your broken heart
one day a shepherd will reach your peak
and blow his flute
and the chorus of passivity will end.
O.P. Jha’s works appeared in Rigorous, Mantis, Punt Volat, Zoetic Press, Discretionary Love, In Parentheses, Shot Glass Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, ANTHRA Zine, The Interwoven Journal etc.
Comments