Under the Green of the Gulmohars

Under the green of the Gulmohars
I waited for you a thousand bleak years.
While buildings burgeoned around me like crazy mushrooms
I sank yet deeper into my own abysmal gloom
The green changed a thousand hues
But I was color-blinded by those eternal blues
A thousand seasons returned back, a thousand Decembers,
I’d have happily died a long ago but just for a silhouette of yours
I waited; waited till the Gulmohars lost all their shades;
Till you too, perhaps, were already dead.

Now numb to everything but a burning heart
I slowly started feeling smug with god-knows-what
And so I stood up to claim the heavens
Ready to die and be amongst my friends.
The dying old Gulmohars around me suddenly shivered,
Giggled at my thoughts the waters in the rivers
‘Hark, hark,’ croaked from somewhere a frog or a bird
But I still couldn’t make sense out of sounds that I heard.
“Grrdddnnnggg!!!” growled the dark clouds in a boisterous thunder
“CAN THE DEAD BE ANY DEADER!!!???”

High above amongst the naked boughs of an old Gulmohar
Hung a corpse decayed and wasted over the years
The once-powerful bones of youth peeking out 
Of flesh emaciated like a plum in a drought.
The secrets revealed, focus back to the eyes,
I realized I was a soul without a shape or size.
‘Ay sinner, thou that committedth suicide
Thou spirit shalt always from heaven or hell hide!’
With this curse I’d been bound to this purgatory
With time infinite till my corpse someone would bury.

The autumn arrived but the weary Gulmohars had nothing to shed
Even tears dry up faster in old age when you just wish you were dead.
The winter blew its chill but before the first patch of snow
The Gulmohars had died long before even the soil below could know
The boughs then bowed and broke, and down fell the dead
The snow then buried them like they never existed.
The gates of heaven then flung wide open
Tempted I was to grab the reason for which I was born
But so long I’d lived with this cycle of love and hate
That no heavenly bliss felt sweeter than earthly pain and sweat.

And so we lived on across a thousand summers
Me and my eternal torch- the sun, searching for traces of Gulmohars
A shade to hide under from the scorching loneliness
Or even a seed to enter into and get a proper face
Or perhaps a bough where I could hang my spirit upon
I searched for them all but discover I could none.
The Gulmohars never came again and neither would she
Since then I have been a loner with just old memories
Memories of days of yore- bliss meshed up in tears
Memories of that girl and my soul mate-
The Gulmohars.

Reviews

[Prateeksha Khot]

And so we lived on across a thousand summers.....

Nice poem. I enjoyed reading it. Great choice of words.

Under the green of the Gulmohars
I waited for you a thousand bleak years.