My Eternal Repose Poem by Amitava Chakraborty

Sixty winters with sixty New Year each
These bare snow clad pines shake off leaves as usual.
The colourful flags tremble in chilled northern wind on a Buddhist pagoda
And throwing snow balls from flakes of Tsangu Lake by all ages, so jovial.
How familiar I with serene gaze of that monk & crazy blink of an adolescent!
Come I by these fellows every time but with changing faces
Promising a new life by an invigorating couple under the new sun,
Can I find myself two score back in these teenagers’ races?

Climbing we both on the icy step hill emerging from the frozen lake,
Frisking I like a deer surpassing easily my liver’s pace,
Sometime he, I sometime hold on each others hand
To reach the desired base like our life’s ambition without recess.
Write we countless love quotes on snowy boulders & plants,
Hang on sacred string for Buddha’s grace in life ahead.
“Listen open sky, listen unbound wind, listen you all to our love story,
Eternal witnesses are you there if our immortal inscriptions once turn fade.

Dreams are true at this two score, fulfilled all desires in life
Once wringed out myself for others, so getting back I today God’s benediction.
Present my hubby holding one hand, future my child pulling the other,
Strolling we three on known Tsangu with overflowed satisfaction.
Blessed my woman life with an ever existing peace family,
Adorned I one temple there, so here we today offering tribute to another.
Restrained Himalaya like this couple beholds the union of a matured love
When looking I forward through my ‘Immature future’s vision’ further.

Come back again! Secluded I today at this three score age
Ever new Tsangu yet much white like my unraveled hair.
As an uncompensated avalanche of the mighty Himalaya sent off my companion for ever
Burden I so rejected by only son, my hope & future’s care.
A misfit old woman I, perhaps ill matched to modernity
Address my today so is Sikkim old age home.
But remember I nature never did betray the heart that loved her
So come I often to respond nature’s call in this aimless roam.



16th August,2008

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