Shattered

Faded waves of paper,
Shattered remains,
Pieces of my soul,
In a scattered haze of torn fragments,
Laces of interwoven links,
Margins of jagged edges,
A picture that once was,
In a distant life,
A memory.

You said we would never meet again,
And yet here you are,
Lying in front of me,
One eye here and one there,
As if following me around,
Wherever I look,
Wherever I turn,
As if searching for the meaning of life,
Finding my fears,
Delving into me.

I can feel the nails digging deeper into me,
Sinking feeling that once I had,
The last telephone conversations,
The final words that you said to me,
The final whisper,
Yours lips,
Trembling in the cold,
I hung on as long as I could,
Until you were gone.

We preserve life as we live it,
Making threads into yarns as tales unfold,
Knowing that nothing lasts forever,
Neither you nor me,
And yet we leave behind,
Our legacy, our love,
Our hopes, our dreams,
As we strive to make the world,
A better place than when we came into it.

So today, as I look at your dregs,
I finally know,
That the marks on my heart,
Will never fade away,
Even though the times will fade,
And memories replaced,
You will still hold me in your arms,
And you will say again and again,
The same words I hear you say,
Loud and clear every day,

"I love you daddy."
 

3. Summer Tales

As time swept on, the last traces of spring melted away,
The rivers wended towards their inimitable journey to the clouds.
The desert winds stravaged through the mountains,
The gentleness of time evaporated,
And left behind the dry warmth of the Sun.
Summer was aborning, and nature changed its course,
From a soft, jocose being to its hungry, sturdy self.
The nuances of spring were over,
The shades of grey faded away,
Revealing the vagaries of time.
The balance of life shifted on its fulcrum,
And summer announced its arrival on the seasonal scales.

Distance in summer has always been a hard one to fathom,
For summer itself is an oriflamme of time,
For family and time to spend at home,
For work and crops and masons and smiths,
And a break from school for the kids.
So is the story of the dame and the shepherd,
Who lived afar, only to have met once,
In their dreams who shared a touch of feeling,
A tale of distance, separation,
Yet one of belonging and togetherness.

There yet was a feather, a grain of sand,
A whisp of smoke, that watched them,
Life itself was an observer, for it knew,
That which is the past, and that which is to come.
Summer evolved its imago, as the wealds sheltered,
The feeling of love dissipated with the moisture in the land,
And left behind a dry rustle of fallen leaves in its wake.

Summer filled life with heat, and heat filled life with summer,
The sun shone at the brightest,
Gibbous shadows of oxen bathed in sweat ploughd the fields,
Dust and debris strewn along the stony lanes,
And new paths hewn amid the empty brooks.
The pastures still grazed, and the cattle fed,
The shepherd spent his days in the shadow of a lonely oak,
And that is when his life changed forever.

The sun was highest in the sky,
As he woke up to find a silky bowl at his feet.
It brimmed with pure water with crystal glow,
And floating in it was a white rose.
He was thirsty, and dipped his fingers for water to drink.
At his touch the water shimmered.
And as he removed his hand, the image cleared,
Unto the beautiful face of his love.
He tried to touch her, feel her,
But was afraid he would lose her in that.

And then her heart shattered, flames erupted,
Scars of distance etched blood,
It seeped through a trail of fine flow,
And turned the rose red.

Thus I was born,
Amid love and separation,
In the midst of summer in the shade of an oak,
Forever to live as me.

Summer carried on, a trail of drops of fine dust,
The shepherd trudged back to his home,
Lost in thought.
Sparse clouds gathered,
Angels dispersed,
That which was home was now no more.
He packed his fiddle, his scant clothes,
And a few paraphernalia from his past,
And set himself on a journey of love.
A few drops of wispy rain had started to descend,
As he took his first steps towards his unknown destination.

- Hirak.

2. The Song of Spring

There was a youthful annoyance in the rivers,
And the grass which blew with the winds of change.
The green fields echoed the raffish volte-face of time,
And seasons turned over in its wake.
Trees sprang up, buds blossomed into flowers galore,
Winter deemed to pause in its stride.
Nature kissed its feet,
Time stood still,
And the ice melted in everyone's hearts,
Filling them with the warmth and radiance of spring.

In the skies one can see the birds return,
From their time in hibernation,
Rebuild their nests in their favorite trees,
Osculating their little ones.
A new life emerges, new changes arrive,
And love emprises beyond its pen.
The vespertine wreath of light shines upon the moment,
And leaves us with a toothsome glow.

Spring fills life and life fills up with spring,
Each petal unfolds a moment of peerless joy.
Every star shines brighter, every cloud whiter,
Amidst the azure of endless boundaries.
Hope springs, like the eyes of a newly born,
And peace ensues, like its first cry.

Tales of spring tell us many stories,
Like the king who was very ill.
And a hundred medicines and daintier food,
The king, could not cure.
Then, a shepherd came from afar,
From the pastures, with a lonesome fiddle.

In the far distance of the kingdom, men and women halted,
And came to the castle that day,
The tune that spring played,
By the hands of the young peasant,
For the king of the land to hear.
Maidens sighed, in love with love itself,
While the elves stopped singing to listen to his tune.
And he played on, and the world listened.

Spring is a song of not just life and love,
But the very essence of living that is a spring in disguise.
Hope is ephemeral but like the spring that erupts from underneath us,
It gives us hope to hope on that is the spirit of life.
For nothing is material but that which we beat,
Nothing is eternal but eternal time.
The song of spring is not just a song,
A time in guise, in a moment in time.

Her eyes, of love, fluttered eyelids,
Black kohl, red lipstick, pink cheeks, she watched
Him, with gently parched lips, with shining love,
As he walked away that day, leaving
The king to rule many a years more.

A thorn pierced my heart as I paused,
Singing to the song, pausing to look at the wonders of spring.
It had been my last, that I sung to his tune.
And now it was time to rest,
Time for summer to arrive.

- Hirak.

[PICK] Love

Synopsis: Love is an eternal feeling.

The early morning mists formed gossamer trails through the valley, their frail beauty a stark contrast to the dark, forbidding forest that loomed behind them. Here and there a hare sprinted through the unkempt woods, and the sight was a guerdon for the solitary trekker. I could hear the sound of rustling leaves, or was it just the heavy wind? Maybe it was the fata morgana of a waterfall looming up ahead. Many a traveler had spent mornings in the beautiful early sunlit hours in these parts, but unless one can reach the ultimate aim, he will always be a tourist manqué.

I paced past the little boulders that swept over the specious grass in search of further adventure. The wind was strong yet mollifying, and the fungible weather was a beau monde in the backdrop of the rising sun. A peculiar warmth had spread over me with the first tinge, just like the feeling of first love. Through the foliage was a transpicuous sight of freshness. The mist was still allowing vision for only a distance, but it was unusually lenitive. The favonian winds blew like a zephyr, and the mirage of this morning spread in my mind as an intoxicating soporific, while the virgin aurora was like a sip of newly-brewed coffee.

My walk was taking me uphill, and I had cottoned to these straits now like heat to fire. There were no footprints in the rocky path, but I knew people of many versatilities had traversed here. I like to think them as snowbirds, who have flown along this hewn road to summer lands. They had a vision which I share, and there was no way to know if nature had mulct them of their victuals. I felt that this journey was not for me alone, but for all of those wary wayfarers. To prove that they had not been wrong, and to show myself that I was not alone.

I am a writer. Nothing out of the ordinary, but a struggling writer, nevertheless. After years of solitude and recluse, I wove my dreams into a fable called Snow Flower. It was a book, a long one, that spoke of the clairvoyance of a peasant. I liked to think of myself as that peasant who suffered for his simplicity. In each section I have envisioned myself as the different seasons, and portrayed his life, his love and his tragedy. But after two years of the release of my book, only two hundred and twenty six copies had been sold.

She walked in that day bathed in the morning light of the dawn. Off the dust laden book shelf she picked up a copy of my book and started reading the first page. Her pellucid self and honest expressions commoved me. By lunch, she had covered half the book.

At the end of the day, during which she read and I watched from the counter, she had finished the book. She finally came over and asked, "How much?"

"It's not for sale," I said. "In any case you have finished it. Why do you need to buy it?"

"So you were watching me the whole time?" she ventured.

"You were hardly hiding," I joked.

As her lips broke into a smile I took the book and opened the front page. Her name was Rose. I wrote:

"To Rose, from Hirak."

And the rest, they say, is history. If only it had been otherwise...

Sometimes the things we do in life are just the things that we dread. The desuetude of life fails to imprint in us the lessons one learns from experience, and for me, one who has lived in his symposure of dreams, life was a confabulated reality.

It was a williwaw that now blew from the valley side, and the first drops of rain seemed to etch five years of lonesomeness. The tears that had magically appeared from the vague memories of happiness were now washed away by the lithe droplets. I walked along like a myrmidon towards the destiny that awaited me. The rain drizzled its fealty over my volatile senses, as if to assure me of its company. Oft in the svelte trailside I could now envision the foundlings of nature. The mist had now evaporated, and the calcavade that composed me and my paraphernalia moved ahead in search of alleviance. The forest had now cleared and I could see the peaks in the distance. They were the famous Blue Mountains above the Valley of Waters. The sight of heaven seemed to slake my year long thrist, and to awaken my extant self once again.

I had now walked quite a distance, and my vantage point was not far. I could sense the change in the winds from the west to the east, from pace to slow. The rain had once again magically gone just as it had appeared. It was the feeling of anticipation at this time of the year that I yearned every moment of my life. It was the cynosure of a palindrome that was my life.

As I swept past another final rockface I had reached the point that they call the Empress Point. Slowly I walked to the edge and looked at the vision that awaited me.

A year after our marriage I had brought Rose to Australia on a summer trip. She loved to trek and I wanted to feel nature to look for fresh inspiration. And it was here that we had come along one day.

I remember how she had slipped on those very pebbles that I now pulled out of my bag. I remember how she had slid along the edge of the cliff. How I wanted to grab out for her but with cowardice I had fumbled. I remember the feeling of remaining there, alone, waiting for something to happen, for someone to tell me all of it had been a dream. Or a nightmare.

Now when I looked out into the Valley, the distant music of the waterfall greeted my cottoned senses. Above the horizon lines I could behold the conglomeration of the clouds kissing the sun. I was once again in her arms today, and she was speaking to me just as she did every year on this day.

"Forgive me once again, dear," I said, as the rain hit me again and rendered me divine.

"My love," she replied. "I loved you that day when you let me go, I loved you when you told me you really loved me so, I'll wait for you here, but I want you to live, and keep our dreams aglow."

The words from her lips turned my tears into a smile. I put the effete pebbles back into my wayworn rucksack and paused. Across the miles the clouds had now disintegrated into separate masses and were drifting away in different directions. Her empyrean self was gone, but she held me like an adage in a nonplus. I turned back towards the direction of the busy world, my destination isle.

As I retraced the footprints that a lonely traveler had created with his wet feet while on the forward journey after a brief spell, I knew that I would be back here amidst her sagacious collage. But for now, another year would be mine, if only for this little while...

Hirak.

5. The Moon Fairylady

The darkest heat was descending over the western sky,
And the birds prepared to gather their straw and fly home to their kids.
It was a beautiful afternoon in the valleys.
The quaint drops of green were at their blooming best,
the soothing raiment of nature was a verdant soliloquy.
The skies were slowly turning into a beautiful golden blue.
The cry of dove in the air,
Brought about a feeling of lightness.
There was a tree in the near distance,
Golden with its magniloquent leaves.
The frail afternoon was to be replaced by night.
Kids played in its aftermath,
A lonely kite,
A menagerie of children in the shadowy light.
The hue of the sunset had brought with it the fragrance of love.
Far away maidens sighed,
In wait of their handsome prince,
Some cried,
For built in the zeitgeist was their souls,
In the form of lost memories.
Nature yawned,
The heat and collage of the day was over,
It was time to relax,
A furtive glance towards the stoic past,
A half eyed look ahead into the sylvan quietus of life.
It was time to shed the folds of crop and green,
And merge into the golden carpets of love and its leisurely dream.

Whilst the vagaries of summer melted into the supple autumn with a halcyon hue,
The world prepared to rest their woes.
Only a boy stay awake in silence.

The ball of fire dissipated a vibgyor of colours as it submerged beyond the realms of the horizon,
But as darkness was beginning to grow,
Another beautiful shining love illuminated the sky.
He watched, bathed in the silver moonlight of the moment.
The scinitilla of reflection that emanated from the crisp leaves debouched from the darkness.
It mirrored a blend of aurum and argent into the naive innonence of his eyes.
A few other leaves swayed in the evening breeze and crumpled to dust,
Some blew about for an entire minute in the flirting winds.
Through the branches of the trusty Elm he continued to see fragments of the silvery Orb,
That which time had left behind, and lost,
In the myth of reality.
And in its midst, then, he saw her.

She was a flowing tinge of silk, a shadow in the glitter of the white.
He remembered the story that his grandfather used to tell him as a kid.
He was no more, but the tale had remained with him.

Once upon a time a king used to love a girl.
But he was proud and kept her captive.
Whilst her heart yearned for her love, her unknown prince,
The king wanted to wash away her dreams.
One day he brought three pills of immortality.
That night when he offered one to her,
She beguiled him and took away all three.
But one was not what three were meant for,
And out she flew into the night sky.
The king tried to catch her, but little could he do as he could not fly.
Since then she has been perched atop the highest mountain,
The unfathomable glimmer of light.
Sitting on the plinths of the unreachable,
Rising with the darkness of every night.

But he knew what others did not, he could feel his heart beat rapidly tonight.
The moon shone the brightest on the eighth day of the eighth lunar month,
When it was time for the golden harvest,
For the springs to start flowing again,
And the creeks to fill.
When it would be the moment of her prince to arrive.
She would smile, and that be her most beautiful day of the year.
He watched all this, and more, with reticent eyes,
Silence which was disrupted only by the occasional screech of an owl.
The irenic ambience waited in anticipation for the spectacle of a lifetime.
Moments dragged by, a bricolage of rustling of leaves and the silvery wisps of smoke.
And then as the moon was at its highest, time froze;
As if cradled in the equanimity of love.

The moon and I met like the confluence of two rivers;
And meted out into the undying sea.
The silence of the moment reverberated across the horizons of time,
Her oneiric eyes lost in the fathoms of my mellow fruitfulness.
And then, we kissed.

But night could not remain static for long,
And like a travelling calcavade it moved on.
In the far reaches, laughter echoed from families of the present,
And it seemed like a time to get together and celebrate with near and dear ones.
On a nigh pond a fleet of swans glided smoothly in the wake of joy.
As the darkness began to fade to be replaced by the icy morning of pride,
He walked away in the freedom of his newly found love.
Close to his home, a silver maiden, the daughter of a merchant, awoke with the rising dawn.

And I watched all, from beginning to end of the Fall.
My sere hands, now withered, lifted into a smoke of form,
And with all the life left in me,
I blessed him.

As the sun rose over the eastern line of infinity,
It washed away the traces of silver that outlined the sky.
I would rise again another day, another year,
Like the phoenix of autumn if dreams could fly...

Hirak.

1. Snow Flower [PICK]

It was time when the drops of snow melted into clear fluid,
In the distance the little bits of white on the leaves
Colligated into bundles of more snow,
Which dissolved and submerged into the whiteness of the ambience.
The darkest winter was about to subside,
Leaving behind the plinths of half-melted ice,
And nature which had been a Croesus so long
Was about to be stripped naked off this paradise.
Often in opportune places there were footmarks of where men had walked
And rested; At other places boulders lay in wait for salvation.
The rhadamanthine rules of the winter were to be followed, they knew.
For winter was nature’s doyen.
The snow capped peaks in the horizon lines reflected the light of the setting sun proudly into the panes of some insignificant house in the valley.
The streams gained more and more life as the winter days wore off,
And flew with sheer pride and ambition furthermore.
And in some far countries birds prepared to return,
The flowers which had so long been snow scared prepared to bloom again,
Time prescinded; The specious snow swept its vastness over the land,
And melted into everyone’s hearts as a picture of the highest order,
Imprinting itself as a wonder; and the whole world watched on.

Amid this serene beauty at oft unrepeated intervals,
Bloomed such a variety of beautiful flowers.
Be not cozened at their petals,
Pink blossoms on branches bending heavy beneath winter's last cry.
They were snow flowers.
Legend said when angels were sad at heaven in the winter,
They came down to earth and found drops of pink snow on the smallest branches,
Interspersed between the grey green leaves,
Sparkling as flowers of hope in despair,
Asserting a coup de grace of light to the dying.
But the flowers were about to be dissolved into the vast white,
For the season was at its end.
So when he came, he traveled hard, climbed the highest mountain,
But not a spot of pink he sighted,
His hands had been empty when he arrived,
And they were empty when he left.

As often happens, some things are best left unsaid.
As the story of the shepherd and the merchants daughter from a faraway land,
Which brought never happiness but pain and more pain,
The distance between them as vast as the deepest ocean,
The interval, the mightiest rain.
The young girl in the tropics once was mesmerized by the rain,
And the storm hit her that day,
Coying away her thrift life from her gently,
Just as the snow started melting from the vast expanses,
Her snow-white face lost color, slowly turning the colour of water – blue.
And the shepherd remembered the great legend of snow flowers.
She was his angel, like the snow, and the hope for her was the pink blossom
That could make her heart beat once again and bring the pink flush of her cheeks back.
He visited winter hence; He who belonged to the pastures;
He, who was a formless being; No one but a mere man;
He traveled to find the legendary snow flower.

But winter has never been recusant to the hands of man.
Whilst beauty is at its own end soft and breathtaking, in the other it is vibrant and proud.
The white was white all around.
He moved all across the expanse inch by inch in search of a speck of pink,
He explored every crevice every peak to find the flower.
He, formless, fought with passing winter.
The water started flowing from under his legs as he stepped on the sheets of ice and flakes of snow,
But like the lily which appears when snow recedes, he would not lose hope and go on.
A month went by in quick time as all the snow melted and left the land green and beautiful as ever,
The trees were more verdant than they had ever been,
The nature danced to the tunes of beautiful birds and the songs of larks.
Winter was now past; It was now time for spring.

He sat empty in the shade of an acorn tree, his sobs blinded by the cuckoos.
Seeing him cry an angel came and asked, “Why do you cry. Oh shepherd?”
“I cry for I could not find the snow flower to save my love.”
“Oh but the snow flower is not here, but in your pastures. Where there is already snow all around how can you see its flowers? You are a shepherd, if you had been in your fields, you would have seen the small bits of snow on the grass blade-tops or the tree branches refracting pink light. What business do you have here?”
He understood her words, he had not seen what he had missed close by.
He at once went back to his own fields and still,
There was there a single piece of grass which dazzled with the pink radiance.
He plucked it and headed for the merchant’s house.
As he entered, he wondered if she was there, if she remembered him still.
As his eyes met her, the time of a month evaporated into nothingness, and continued from the moment he had left.

Going to her he offered her the flower.
She smiled at him and touched his cheeks.
Said she “My love; I want to know,
How beautiful the snow capped mountains are,
When snow drizzles in the highest peaks,
Is it a wondrous sight?
Is it true, that snow is white?”
Said he, “My love, I wanted to find,
The snow flower, which would bring you to life.
I had eyes for the flower only,
The color of snow I did not see.”

It is not the snow which is a flower,
But snow itself is a garden of immaculate treasures.
And even today,
When the pink has melted into a colorless hue,
It reminds me of the shepherd and the dame.
The story that the snow carried away,
And whispered every year on Christmas’ day.
That is why we have colors on tree top pines,
To remind us of legendary colorful snow flowers,
And that’s why the angels quietly at night,
Come there to look at their families and departed ones.

And the blade of grass? It still lies in my heart,
Whence she was buried in a snowy cemetery,
Her last wish was to see me, I know,
For I was snow, once, but no more.

- Hirak.