Empty Boats In Yamuna Poem by Hemant Shesh

How many were there - The boats: empty, abandoned and waiting,
Where did the travelers go who were to ride them on their return
An afternoon was passing through our bodies like a train and there were
A few swifts with colors of sunset glittering in their eyes

There was Glue bursting out of the trunks of trees
Forlorn nests on the branches
There were lonesome, shriveled lanes,
A few tattered houses drowned in ennui
melting was a river under their foundation
Since the time immemorial

After their past birth these stairs of Ghat were reborn
as boats in 1987 AD

They habituated in waiting at the banks
For years together they are in meditation: lonely and empty
waiting for the pilgrims
We do not know what they shall become
After the exoneration from the curse and leaving the passengers
Back to the Ghat!