Sooner Comes Help If Not At Once Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

A lone survivor wakes from a shipwreck,
Washed ashore on deserted lands
Of an island tiny as was lonely;
Sores and lesions all over his back
Aggravated by hot and humid sands,
As helpless as a newly born might be;
Resigned to fate, dreaming of his lost lands,
Bare hands his sole mute friends.

Aimless and idle all his time he spent
In fervent prayers to God,
As non believer, he felt odd,
And gave his frustrations a full vent—
‘Pray spare me thine punishing rod'.
Rest of time he spent scanning thankless skies,
Saw nothing, vast as could see his tired eyes,
And felt like tender pea without a pod.

And resigned that nothing would alter
His fate, he built on hopeless sands,
With driftwood and leaves, odds and ends,
A castle of a make-shift shelter
To spare him from heedless sun and rain,
To store his belongings so bare,
Whatever the island could spare—
Not so much to keep him safe as be sane.

As he was returning one fateful day
From food gathering and shorn of aim,
As if his fate was laughing in dismay,
He found his little hut in flame,
Smoke billowing high in the sky,
Bidding all he had a ghostly good bye—
Wailing aloud in grief and anger,
He found his life on a cliff-hanger.

Defeated, lost of hope, all the way,
Slept off, to find his fate frowning at him,
But when woke up late, late next day
By a ship's sounding, shedding steam,
Approaching the isle like a pleasant dream:
‘How did you know a stranded man was near? '
‘Your smoke signal, man, it was loud and clear'.
‘I should have known; there's someone supreme! '

Let things go worse, sadder from bad,
God does in touch with life remain,
Through sufferings, through pain and train,
No one need lose heart in cold dread.
Up in flames goes when one's shelter,
God's grace such smoke signals summons.
Busy, never still to falter,
And help cometh, sooner if not at once.
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Narrative | 01.07.04 |