WHAT REMAINED AFTER THE FLOOD DAYS

WHAT REMAINED AFTER THE FLOOD DAYS

In the mountains,

in the fog of mystic presences,

in the low blowing winds

wherein that calm ancestral breath

whistles beyond lives,

in the prickly bushes of survival

for generations of living species,

in the stone rubbles wherein

lurks the danger of snakebites,

in the bathing spots that keep in store

the icy cool and fish' kisses

while bursting forth and steep,

in the trees standing tall

with sky-revealing hollow bowels,

in the tempting cliff ends

of steep inclines deep enough

to shed the nest of life

with a single leap forward-

we had been here on a holiday

traversing narrow walks

of rustic breweries and hunting meat.

The gang of rowdy aesthetes

had vowed to frequent here

again and again.

Then, after the sighs turned storms,

and, aqua ducts into flood-makers,

after those dog days of hellish scenes,

now no one comes by.

Those herd of deers, visitors' delight,

have been washed away.

Lasses of wild-honey complexion

and their sires like burned earth,

have retreated to inner forests;

their unreflective fish-eyes

filled with the ambers of terror.

In the plains

those humble folks, with no legacies,

nestling in the streets

under the roof of the sky,

total wrecks, the dispossessed,

the heirs of those dead by water,

still undead even after outbreaks

of diseases, aftermaths of floods,

new genealogies of exodus,

whose lives were land-slided

by choleric mountain gods

and sedentary departmental gods.

We might turn up tomorrow as well.

Traversing new paths gone left and right,

passing by boulders displaced from heights

and the skeletons of hamlets,

pitying those hapless

still burning in the pyres of loss,

as guests of friends in the department,

to those fountains, where awaits

the cool and the fish-kisses,

seeking rustic breweries and hunting meat,

singing songs, reciting poems....