To The Fallen Flower Poem by Saroj Padhi

TO THE FALLEN FLOWER

Did you ever have a name?
Now looking at your faceless beauty
I wonder how you fell into ignominy and shame!

Soiled, shabby and soulless
your body lies on the cold asphalt body
of our civilization like a neglected corpse
without a sympathetic look from wayfarers
as silently you groan on
under thousand feet and wheels
as you rotate and shift from gravel to gravel
driven by wind's harsh swirls.

How did you drop this morning
to this hellish grave
away from the living stalk
severed from pristine Nature's balm?
Did you fall from some cruel plucker's hand,
or from the loose end of the braid of a damsel
strolling on the dry, winged bridge-side sand?

Or from the excited wings of a new wed's garnished car
speeding on the bridge in the dark of dawn
to reach the bride's long cherished dream land?

Wheels and thousand feet tread you down-
as you lie in undiminished glory like fallen blondes of the town
who are solicited in secret by our moral men
behind the curtain of lame virtue and masculine frown!

I don't have the courage to pick you from your siesta
though I bleed this morning with you on the soulless bridge
to be overtaken soon by day's artificial pleasures and fiesta!