The Sheepfold Poem by Rijan Britanicus Acharya

Pastoral land, when I walked just
by passion of wandering—high and earnest,
it failed my rural lust,
as by quiet inferno, I stood—
such dying streams, running elegies
those dead shoots laid
evaporated and brown.

Abandoned! Settlers fled, but not who rooted
selves like oaks: though not by stubborn vanity
they shifted not but a tempting sign,
and remaining until creatures soil again;

The sheepfold! Rotting and poisoning,
that little perhaps seven sheep sized;
I sealed nose—that solitary shepherd
but motioned is he
singing a rural elegy,
by a compulsive oath.

He rhymed fresher wars,
wrath of civil lords
or rivals or older wars
or disappearance of the herds.

He acted loathe, I rooted near,
he drowsily lead away:
an absolute remains of poisoned grounds;
he moved to the dead's way
where no summer inheritance made some grand
cemetery—self he reflected it, along lying ones.
The sheepfold as ghost-turned
when groaning in apparent I heard,
‘No heavenly things I said,
bloods and swords and rivals and bullets,
the shadows floated!
Ah! Illusionary springs—
I fastened towards urban.