HERE LAY ...
K. V. RAGHUPATHI
Here in the deep, drooping, dripping forests,
Where the earth is cool after silvery rain,
Where the cool, sizzling lissome winds beat their
muffled drums through the emerald leaves as ruffled,
Where the surroundings are embalmed with myrrhs
and aloes
in thousand colours and variations,
As the lilting birds with their myriad tones harmonise
the symphony in peace,
Beside the lulling lake and the rising mountains from
the wistful moors far away,
He was consigned to flames,
As he had wished while alive,
As I now see his ashes distilled in the brown earth,
Defeated not,
In his dappled and mottled life,
Full of meaningless struggles and conflicts
I know he had steered into,
Anchored to the shore of his ripened age,
At last when the black ghost drifted him off,
Into the vast, infinite – nothingness