Change
Summer brings long unpleasant memories:
Once in my childhood in this small town
superlative trees towered high above
covering the burning sun
spreading cool shadows;
birds chittered and quarrelled and littered,
now concrete structures loomed high above
dwarfing the trees
and some have been cut down to raise the complexes.
Once brown leaves bedded the earth
I enjoyed the lyrics emanating from my feet;
now broken bottles, overused polythene covers, charred glass fragments,
brown boxes, blood-stained napkins, shit-marked baby diapers,
and old faded crumpled newspapers tossed on the ground.
Once were studded the streets and roads
with jatkas*, bullock carts, rickshaws, and cycles
renting the air with mellifluous human voice;
now are filled with tractors and trucks
honking the air with smoke and dust.
Once the river abetting my house in the village
flew from the high hills and valleys,
greeting the dawn and the villages all along
with avians soaring and gliding across the watery expanse,
teeming fish diving and the waves lapping at the shore;
now lay fractured and forlorn.
Once the soil was pure and full of life
now blazing sun taunting its heat
with ground water sinking
making the farmers and people sad.
These are the things in sorrow I witness in my twilight years!
(* a horse-drawn carriage)
Thoughts
Thoughts as invisible stars
battle to stay in darkness;
like indisciplined baboons
shout, scream, and fight to dominate;
will not refuse to yield
will not decay with time
will not perish until the last breath;
thoughts as woolly clouds,
slip, slide, and role
take infinite shapes;
they eat away time
they drain energy;
they are mine and yours to bear the burden
heavy as mountains;
an anxiety here, a worry there,
a pain here, a fear there,
a frustration here, a despair there,
it is the same as thought, the insider as the outsider
the outsider as the insider;
thoughts as swarm of locusts at a ranch in Nanyuki
swirl and stumble, and slash;
yet life moves on
a bloom here, a bloom there;
the more you foil them, the more they frustrate you
and push you through,
drag you down into the abysmal darkness;
each one is stuck like an insect in the web;
without them the world would be like a grave
without them you are a big zero!
Nostalgia
Summer gone with shadows loom like glory on
from the scorching sun,
the mountains unfolded with the fall of leaves
in their wide sweep, the plain landscape loomed large round
I roamed in the woods that were crowned in splendours
the upland with a glow,
where the gay company of trees looked down
on the ground, smelling multitudes.
Summer rain rushing through the woods
pelting the leaves and drenching the ground.
I was not lonely, but bright in the company of
birds and the leaves strewn along the winding way.
Those jocund days
I lost in the name of development.
Now like wounds in my consciousness stayed.
Who butchered the trusting, innocent woods that I frequented once
to feed the plunderer’s fire greed that flew like chips?
Now you would never know there stood woods
before human greed entered through the woods;
the grand children would shoo away
the idea: there stood woods before human greed penetrated.
They built human houses as tombs
and raised pagoda-like structures
upon the trees
that now let me pay my homage:
May the trees that existed once
grow elsewhere in abundance and shelter the birds
and creepy-crawlies.
