General Truth. Poem by PARTHA SARATHI PAUL

What if the world around you
changes overnight and you remain the same?
Days and nights will come and go in the same way.

Mostly in the same way
Shackled with the daily rhymes and verses.
Only some hours sometimes may bite off some old biscuits
dipping them well in the fleeting hot tea
looking outside of a newly painted window
that overlooks the short-lived beauty
of a flower in a courtyard garden
what sees some alien birds
filling up some or many shadowy recesses
with their stop over chirps and coos.

Past too saw some pasts
sinking in shallow or deep water
to be out only on the other side
or to be lost under the fog shrouded sky.

Future like a peeping-Tom peeps through
the key-hole of a makeshift room
or a cardboard character
to see and enjoy the rolling things
with as such no clothes on.

Past heaves its gathered sighs
in the brand new pages of tomorrow
and of the day after tomorrow
and now butterflies
are then caterpillars
wriggling about a tired tree.