Descent
©March 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
First comes desire, an urgent
Pressing need to do:
I want this, I want to do this.
Next comes resistance:
No, I don’t!
I won’t! I cannot!
Then comes stasis.
And the minutes tick away
Lifetimes slide past,
Looking sorrowfully
Out of the corners of their
Eyes, moist with promise.
And grey ghosts crowd at the door.
Beckoning through the wood.
(They can see through it, you understand.)
And one says, “Do you practise?
Do you practise your literature?”
Practise my literature?
What sort of question is that, Dad?
A dream nudges memory:
Carrying a third of an appalam
To Appa, lying on the floor above.
He smiles, pale and alive.
But he’s dead, don’t you remember?
Been dead a few years!
Dust on the floor makes faces
Faces gleam through air and mist.
Faces gibber and point in mirrors.
Faces emerge from bones in dreams.
I like this one best!
Fingers trace patterns on coverlet.
Geometric ones, beautiful,
But gone forever, air-molecules
Carrying away pictures
Into the dustbin of time.
And the music stays on
And on, and on, like madness,
Like a tap that someone forgot to
Turn off.
Turn it off!
Turn it all off!
String together this lute.
Play it on the edge of a cliff.
Start singing to the sun.
Let the song grow.
Get UP!
Descend the stairs.
They never end.