Poetry of the day

Metro crosses Yamuna

The shock of seeing up against

the clouds , a gleaming silver train

gliding past like a superior, alien thing,

continues as I see the extra tall girders

driven into the dried up river.

The new bridge is much higher

as if it is meant to remain

when others get washed away; sensing

that despite everything done to it

the river might still rise up some day:

it is also called the Dark One , sister

to the god of death .

That is why birds return ,

wheel in its mists, land, fly off again,

finding and yet searching unreconciled;

buffaloes return , find their daylight dreams;

mosses, grasses, and reeds return

for their own yearnings and remedies;

watermelons return to swell and ripen,

fill up with repeatable meanings;

and then flowers :

its waters are never without them ,

in the name of the living

and the departed .

Someday I too will end

and join up for my own dialogues

with eternities , return unreconciled

-- a bird, a weed , a watermelon ;

gleaming silver trains will be passing

above against the clouds.