Halting Dreams

The leaves are growing out of
a harangue of loneliness
palms cupped I listen to silences
of winter or summers
and unmask faces caught in
tangle of storm, the history of
what was not written or recorded
in books, time’s erasure in moments
fraught with changing paths or charge
with turbulence of rains;
A vast momentary haul of a ship’s load
or a vessel’s yachting,
it is fun to remember and demonise time
in these hills where a cloudburst thumps
the heart, pounds on it like merciless beating
of bird’s wings, or like the beak of a crow
steals thunder, I walk and then a reservoir
pumps blood into the hiatus of living the dead.
Or, the dead living. Shadows typically torment,
lengthen or shorten to spin yarns
in these dead blue hills where a rosary
does not match prayer, but the bluish hue
carps on dreams and a thicket of grass
stumbles in front of you. I wash pains momentarily as a rising quicksand halts
my dreams.

Ananya S Guha lives in Shillong. He has ten collections of poetry in English and has been writing and publishing his poetry for the last forty years.