SILENCE OF THE SUICIDE TREE

I
Silence has set in like an old lorn cart
Horseless in the rain on some deserted village outskirts

The wind breathed strangely, and the leaves followed it all
As if to the gatherer did they belong – with all sportive eagerness,
As if life were some flotsam I found on seaside sands
sometime back – where is the dignity of a tree
when fallen leaves of its own don’t fall at its foot and cover it?

II
Blue hills under heavy rainclouds
Herons fly over the valley
Passing the calm smoke trailing up
From the cooling crematorium.


Thoithoi Pukhrambam