Cheerless Portrait

(I)

In this winter like spell
a ravine splits the foothills
this rain invites melancholy
to her home
where her babies
crying in starvation.
In search of chow
mother
nomadic – akin
from hill to hill
from bough to bough
in spite of food every time
with bare jaws and beak
holding the false hope
of continued existence.

(II)

The dull sheets of sky
sends the deluge of pitiless drops
lessening on the fresh daisies –
spangled grassy knoll
on the deadly boughs of fallen tree
passing life to its naked roots.
Where this feeble mother
with finite sufferings
rests a jiffy
and croons
to her creator
the refrain of severance
and the searing pain
emerging from her eyes.

(III)

From some corner
she too writes to me
the yarn of downpour
disturbed the fine slant
of her nearby hillock
and the shore of striking creek
running past her home.

She writes to me
with a lump in her throat
drawing her deciphered musings
and fighting back her tears
scrawling on a drenched paper
the brutal tale of deluge.

From the smeared shore of Jhelum
she writes;
the fluctuating
distance of filthy water
and the frozen eyes of fishermen.
She writes;
temple chants the hymn
after the bell’s every boom.

She further writes to me
the yarn of 2nd oppressor.
She writes it never warns
it visits you in the dark
akin to First one
and leaves your corpse
in the lanes of neighbor
it departs you
damped not in blood
but
fairly in ruthless water.

(IV)

To the spring I beseeched
come Oh spring
and convey life to my demised vale.
To its distressed folks
explicate the riddle of ecstasy.

Out of suffering and extreme ruin
come and attire my land
in apparels of arresting beauty.

Come and visit my perished paradise
its glum gardens
and foul brooks.
Come and heal the scene of desolation
Come and cease this growing rift
of man and nature.