HISTORY
Stuck in an absurd divide,
Between truth and half-truth,
I am a mirror capturing the contours
Of the days that were then.
Faces shift on the page of glass,
Blurry, painted and plain.
Overlapping faces of
Civilisations rise and fall
To their broken glory.
Cities, fortresses, landscapes
Along the meandering length of time,
Crawl to meet the end of a story.
Faces wearing triumphs of battles won
On bloody fields, that were once
Sprawls of flowing green, smile
Under a starry fragrance.
Faces crumpled at war-cries,
At sirens screaming,
At loud laments ripping apart
The ecstatic valleys of spring,
Faces baffled at the uncanny chants in
The ruins, caves and dens,
And the whispers of yesterdays' ghosts
Echo in silence.
Cradling a bundle of unborn days
And untold tales inside,
I sit like a stoic saint waiting to see,
The other faces that will float into
My page of glass.
What is that incorrigible legacy
Time will pass to me?
I wait to discover my digital face
Muraled on the rocks of another planet
Smiling at me happily.
Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger Books, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.
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