Passing
©March 3rd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Everything passes, even this feeling,
Everything passes, and I mourn it all,
In the impermanence there is immanence,
And when they pass – all things, all loves, all lives,
I mourn them all, and the Godhead in them.
I mourn backwards through time.
All the things I remember, and all I don’t:
The whistle-lollipops on which I, a child,
Would suck with a relish I cannot recapture,
The enormous trees up which I shinnied,
Agile as a monkey, or an imp, in childhood,
The green tamarinds I ate, sour and succulent,
Hanging off branches in Pune’s woods,
So mysterious, so alluring to a child,
Who never wanted to read or write,
Just play, and live in make-believe all day long.
I mourn backwards through time.
The passing of my school days,
That I valued my life so little that
I cannot remember much of it,
Only the sensory world in which I swam.
And those things I do remember,
Fill me with a spiky regret:
Sharp winter air in Pune when I was seven,
The slipping of sunlight and rain
Over polished mango leaves,
The songs on All India Radio,
The world of books into which I plunged
After my first reluctance and rejection of them,
My mother’s fragrant foods which were a fact of life,
Like love, or joy, or goats on the street,
Or bird-song, or jasmine flowers at my window.
I mourn backwards through time.
But these days, I also mourn these:
The stores that close down,
Billboards which would stare down
At me while I paid them no heed,
Now gone, given way to unbearable gloss,
The decor in banks I used to visit,
Now so clinical and perfect
Like mannequins with no skin pores.
I mourn lost bookstores
In Arlington,
Or Harvard Square,
Or Porter Square,
Or Davis Square,
Or Medford Square.
I mourn the missing street performers,
Jugglers and puppeteers,
Story-tellers and singers,
We’re all gone now.
I mourn the minutes, hours, days, years
Of my life, the lives of those I love,
The lives of those whom I have not yet met,
The lives of all the creatures vanishing
Before I shall ever meet them.
Everything passes through me,
And through you – and somewhere,
We’ll meet, you and I, you with your
Memories, I with mine,
And we will let them flow through us,
And beyond, until all fades away.
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