I walk in
the crematorium with a bouquet,
of flowers artificially
scented, wilted long back
and with
his letters, his unfinished songs
the last
gift from a pen friend
The priest
tells me how the bearded lunatic
would in
life, meditate on hopping birds
and follow
them to their nests,
tracing
their claw-prints on sheets of air
(he was one
of them, but only wingless)
how he
would sing in the woods, and in the streets
laying his
soul bare, walking naked among the veiled;
and how he would
swim in the deepest of rivers,
only to
come back lighter, having drowned a part of his being,
to rise unimpeded
as the air bubbles do
Then comes clad
in back, she, his inspiration
What more
can she be,
than an
unfinished song echoed by a dead cold stone,
an autumn
flower, only in half-blossom?
and there
she stands, with misted eyes
an ordinary
rhyme, waiting to be sung
and to be
lost in the woods, like all songs do
The wine spilled
on the flowers reminds me
of an
incomplete verse he had mailed me years ago
“The more I dissolve her in me, the more I
catch her colour,
Do the birds-of-passage
ever miss their home?
Is losing
oneself the only way to become whole?”
I wrote
back, “Some songs are better left unfinished”.
What more
could he write to a mere confidant, a pen friend?
What less
could he get back in return, my empty lines?
I was the
poet he once wrote, he wanted to be
He was the
bird, I always knew, I could never fly like,
I used to
dream of his music,
The rustling
of leaves - his voice,
the trees
and the wind- his instruments.
Here on his
funeral, today
amidst the
aromatic flames, the musical wine,
his empty
inkpot, the ashes of yellow pages,
and the
plucked flowers breathing heavily in silence,
I feel
lighter than an air bubble,
I feel
heavier than a dead cold stone
But I can’t
rise, I can’t reflect.
Of all that
can be consumed by the demons of time,
What could
ever fill an empty soul?
I see them leaving
the crematorium now,
The mourners
and the merry-makers
The ones
that his soulful music would once enthrall,
and the
ones who had called him a madcap once
the ones
who pitied him and the ones who adored him
I get up to
hand over the inked envelopes,
to whom I
think they belong to,
Our eyes
meet and I find hers shallow and empty,
I step back
in a musing gaze, as the music slowly fades,
I wonder
why of all, he had chosen me to write to, about her
She leaves;
I let her go, without any exchange, but for a fleeting glance
He has now been
reduced to ashes, within and without
I see his
inspiration, now reduced to a tiny ink blot on a large white canvas,
His letters
shall stay with me, a poet’s keepsake.
