A Dream Of The Lost Past Poem by Mohabeer Beeharry

One early evening
Long ago,
As the sun drifted over the belt
Of the wood that skirted my birth place,
Heavy hearted
I made my way towards the village lake,
A serene but sad place,
The last vestige of a disappearing panoply.

There the hills drifted,
Rose and fell away towards endless
Undulating fields of young sugar cane
A riot of green,
Laced with streaks of yellow sheen.

As I strolled my eyes around,
Choked by an explosion of sobs
And tears,
My heart broke and I cried.

For those fields,
Those woods and that lake,
Wrapped up in an ominous shroud of dark shadows
Waiting for the hanging sword to come down,
Had all a halo of unsystematic destruction
Suspending on their heads.

At the thought of what is to come
I shuddered.
Soon they would not be there.
Gone,
Gone for ever
And ever,
Something like the old locomotive,
Dead,
Frail and hypocritical memories in brilliant colours
On the wall.

How time goes,
A river of no return
And with it those things,
That are most precious
And dear,
A battle for change
And for modernity.

One morning the village well
Succumbed to the bulldozers roaring violence
The relentless hunger of modern time.
The brook
That had for years
Perked up the joys of the village children,

The old cemetery,
Decked with annual carpets of multicoloured crocus,
And the thatched houses,
Symbols of love, simplicity
And dedicated hard work
Had all helplessly eased into the dumb graves of the past.

Now and then
When in my being the weather is calm
And my sleep deep,
I see their souls
In their old garbs
Wistful eyes laden with unshed tears.

I see the sugar cane fields,
The old cemetery,
The hibiscus in pink blooms.

I see my old peach trees
And my clumps of the queen of the night
Lifting billows of inebriating fragrance
To the moon.

Like my own youth,
Those things are not there anymore,
Replaced by whitewashed giants.
Why oh why has time got to change?
Why have we got to be so drastically modern?