Silence (Asatire on Life)

By Anish kanjilal

The Beast’s fears

Tithonus’s prayers

and Snow White sleeps surrounded

by seven doubts....

***

I have yet to have an encounter with death,

One day I, a corpse, will lie

upon myself in sheer negligence...

Life indeed a penance

and death a repentance?

No green, no yellow, no blue

But only ‘black’!?

From green to yellow and a touch of brown,

the leaf will crack

From crawling to walking, from walking

to racing and no turning back?!

And then passing away

where who knows?

No gust to breathe in my ears

No trees whom I have addressed

as dear

No mountain to chill

No more I to grace the hill

The trespassing over,

when who knows?

Lear will have to grow old

No Genie of Aladdin to warm

back the cold

Midas’s touch cannot revive what was gold

***

Childhood, just hide and seek

Youth, we don’t hide but just seek

Middle age; the thought reverses

just live to seek and

then to hide

Old age scared to hide

No use of what we may dare to seek…

After life we hide and

none to seek…

Afflicted by my impish innocence

I didn’t have you

Intoxicated by the charms of youth

where were you?

This age of mine, found a mentor

It’s an every night stand with you, you and

only you

***

The mist belts the blue with the

shroud of darkness

The smog, the foster child of human

Greed, curtains the green

But the blue would return

with the nature revolting…

The green to grey — my destiny

slowly submerges in my

pool of despair

In the celestial swoon myself

unconscious

Time withers me I die every moment

in my subconscious

I want to puke my fright

with all my might

The living die, I want to get

rid off this sight

But Alas! It’s useless to be a

fugitive in my way to defy the

law what guides every mortal

And though I run, though I pant

the only consolation is this

that Death is the final unescapable portal…

***

Cinderella found her shoe and saved her day,

The pied piper’s ditty

took away the children

and made Hamelin pay

***

The spring rejuvenates, the summer beats

Autumn decays and Winter wreaths

Death’s commemoration — a consolation

or a compensation?

Life vanquished — Death glorious...

Is it worth to mention?

I wear my conceit like a tree

wears a creeper

Those who dishonour time, to them

my fateless elegy will be a cipher.

On the sandy shores and on the

windy hills

My shadow devoured by waves

and clouds

On the final epitaph I engrave

my mood,

I compose this dirge as

Best I could

Will I see not what I see now?

Will I not carry the reward what

I plough?

Will I not return

and clone myself?

and be together like now

with thyself?

Life ridiculed and I know the answer

Death my master and I dwindle

on its string, like a puppet dancer…

***

It is said that Alice had been in

the Wonderland

Life a fairy tale, appears helpless

without a magic wand…

Who am I?

an atheist, a seraphic, an agnostic

or someone who has an

atavistic fear of Providence…

I in a sojourn live amidst a trance

sooner or later to be adjourned

and tranquilised by death

My science combats with my religion

Once brain dead no remembrance

If this law was flouted

I would have known what I was

before I being resurrected into this...

and what’s after when I will lose

my sense.

But myth adjudicates that there

is a river named Lethe, a pool of oblivion

and even God resurrects at intervals,

he rises from grave — the notion is demagogic

and my thoughts, a chameleon...

***

The Final Voyage

***

The pelting showers gallop on my reflection

A mist on the silver

Wake up Snow White to see Lear to

have grown old,

Wake up Tithonus and be bold

As what is warm today will be smeared by cold...

What couldn’t I find in seminary?

What was Cinderella to me?

What came and went with the Pied Piper

and was burnt as a corpse in the

flame of the magic lamp,

In which lives the Genie of Aladdin?

“Silence Redefined in the denomination

of Grave!”

Be Brave! Be Brave? Be Brave...

***

The enigmatic obscurity lit up occasionally

by the blazing lightning

The sea swelling and the tides rising

The calypsonian wind singing the dirge

In a metallic chamber hammered by Thor

On a sleep ride what life abhor

Swimming who knows where? Which mode!

Sleep, shut or restart...

But who will log the code?

Crawling babies screaming loud

Old age despise, what young are proud

Wearing the darkness as a shroud

Dragged to the cradle made of cloud

Finally, the shutter shuts

to capture the last imprint

But until and unless you get some hint

Tough mind...tough mind...tough mind....

Don’t shut your eyes...

By Anish kanjilal