A Tale Of Sunken Silence Poem by Ravi Panamanna

From inn to inn, for long years
It was a gathering wind.
From morn’ to morn’, for endless decades
It was toil beyond all tales.

A mother and a son-
They belonged to these winds,
They were for a long time a common sight
Doing errands in the neighbourhood,
Buying their commonplace dreams.

Theirs, a simple existence,
Theirs, a life within leaps and bounds.
Beyond their thached roof
It was all an open sky,
Their songs, but a deepening sigh.

Seasons ever told the same tale,
The meads received the same passing wind.
The same birds returned every season
And the world was peaceful within the bosom.

And when the streams were flowing quiet,
The dales whispering unto soft winds,
The son, leaving his mother to tears
Passed away after a brief illness.

She swallowed her pains,
Sold her dreams to the passing wind.
A withered frame,
She was a tree, hollow deep within.

And upon a temple pavement
I saw her once among the passing crowd;
She was in sunken dreams.
Beyond the voices of the surrounding world,
She was meeting her shadow with an indifferent air,
She was listening to the silence of her heart.