The Day After Poem by Madathil Rajendran Nair

The day after Diwali
I sat under a tree
like the Buddha of yore
ruminating.

The boom and glory
of the day before
had vanished.
There were only desultory cracks
here and there
and the odour of cracker fumes.

The earth lay dampened,
mercy of an unsolicited thunder cloud,
smelling like
a woman in heat.

And I, an incapable man
in his seventies, sat there,
looking ahead
at the abyss that lay before,
gray without the footsteps of events.

They call it by names,
death someone said,
I don't care,
my days of Diwali booms
are over,
also the middle age of diabetic exultation,
of torpid stupor
post-indulgence.
Am looking at the void
called the day after

To embrace, drown in it
to rejuvenate and return
to celebrate my Diwalis again.

Keep the crackers ready
and my luscious mates too,
life is unceasing ecstasy:
my unending body
in whatever form
it is recreated
through my eternal sojourn
wreaks of Diwali fumes!

Life is Diwali,
don't worry,
there is no
day after or before,
there is only the now,
glorious, revealing
all the time,
I have no choice
and so I am!