The Rains

By Suman Kumar

The Monsoon has arrived :

Dark clouds, heavily laden, hover overhead;

And my heart equally laden with grief

Hangs underneath,

The clearer skies are no more

And no more are there with me

Anything but a handful of memories

To remember you by,

That beating of your heart

I heard when I held you tight--

The deafening sounds of

The fervent rain on

My window-panes have stolen it,

And that spark in your eyes

When they found mine--

The lightning in the skies

Has dimmed their luminescence,

And this lightening,

In parting heavy clouds,

It has parted our ways:

Forked in my destiny's already

Meandering path

A couple meaders more-

One that seemingly goes forth-

Away from your sight

And gets lost in a listless haze,

Another that visibly

Takes me Round-

Round that meander last,

And transports me

To the realms of times past-

Where there's you,

There's clear skies,

And there's hope.

And I have been stuck

In this endless loop--

From one meander

To another and back again

For what has been

A decade of hopeless desperation

And great loss,

And I ask these rampant rains

"Why don't you relent a bit?

Let me have one starry night,

One haze-less day

So that I may see

Beyond the loop,"

And I am told that

It's my own grief

That has enabled the wetness

To last for long,

That it's my own desperation

That has driven the laden clouds insane,

My own anger that has

Supplied the power with which

The bolt strikes

And lights the heaven and earth

From end to end,

And yet this knowledge

Is of no use to me,

For I know not

Of the amount of grief I'm in,

Nor I know the distance

To which my own desperation

Will stretch my insanity,

Or the magnitude of my anger,

I know only

That I burn with rage-

Rage against the dying of Hope,

And Rage against the persevering dampness

In my eyes,

See, there's Monsoon in there too,

And of the un-ending kind!

By Suman Kumar