Bier Bearer Poem by Saroj Padhi

The bier moves ahead
couched on kins' loving shoulders
with its weight slowly growing,
(it's believed that corpses weigh heavier)
hushed by wailings of near and dears,
teetering over tottering steps
yet sure of its going;

without a return look at life,
back from shore,
to pits of unknown depths ebbing
as the body hides under heaps of flowers
and the face under a blistering sun
into a wilderness, keeps sinking;
smokes from incense sticks on it
like intriguing questions, keep coiling
when a voice emerges from the wind
and is heard saying
‘Stop me not from my way to the pyre
where logs ready before my birth
with the lure of a holy fire
to twist the tale of my suffering
into a happy ending.
I'm awake to the white whispers now
in my dead ears ringing
as with each step towards the pyre
nearer to Him I'm turning
like a beloved into her lover melting;
I know after a while my beloved bearers
from apparition to real, go away
leaving me here where the last desire
that lurks in my ash is to sway
like a blade of grass
as I turn into common clay.'