A Father From His Grave Poem by Saroj Padhi

A FATHER FROM HIS GRAVE

Buried beneath stacks of books, old newspapers
Medicine covers and chits of scribbled papers,
I'm a cold, yellowing memory with a damp scent
Inviting rats from holes to gnaw at my years spent,
With ramshackle bones, hollowed midriffs, dry marrows
Dream-drenched words and outdated, juvenile sorrows;

Why do you bury me with those tall wishes?
Try to bamboozle me with such annual flashes?
Without going into the root of the fire that burned
To turn me into these handfuls of nameless stray ashes?

For I burned as a wet termite-eaten log during lifetime
Without money to buy a litre or half of catalyst kerosene,
Emptily I lived on dreams oozing in quick intervals
From the doted petals of a vanished jasmine!

I lived in the shrunken cocoon of my hollowed ideals
Of honesty, righteous anger and some needed self-denials
Without the art to hide all originals
As you do now under garb of high-tech expensive facials!

Remember me dears as simple earth without love of gold
As simple wind across a jasmine without any artistic hold
A keen, cool fire without causing to the nearest any rashes
A stream of water, with from the Sun, occasional green flashes
And above all a skyful of dreams with some meaningful dashes!

@ COPY RIGHT: SAROJ K. PADHI / 22.06.15