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....
