The Olden Banyan Tree Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

The banyan tree,
Olden banyan tree,
The aerial roots of it
Spreading over
As the canopy up above
And some roots hanging down,
Some struck down into earth
And like the solid mid pillars
And the birds nestled
Making a noise,
A landmark it was in the past,
But now the similar-appearing highway
With the place name
Denoting
And the banyan tree often chopped off
As for road and building
And ever new construction on the anvil.

Still the forgotten wayfarers come
And pause by
Under the shade,
The cool shade of it to rest,
Still cattle and people come to,
But the saints I find them not,
Not even the folks saying with lustre
The same awesome tales sometimes,
Sometimes attributing to religious stories,
But the tree in its archetypal natural stride of own
In the ancestral hamlet.