Where The Railroad Ended For Her Poem by Dr PJ Raj Kamal

On a long long journey
From the stillbirth
Of river Beas in Himachal
To the burning Mumbai
Home to my early sunrises
To the dying Nila of far south
In my sojourn in all bluish nature
Mighty mountains, skies and seas
Landscapes grey and stark
She followed as glistening snow
Silver cloud and sparkling surf
Clad in white, a blue blood
Awesome, evergreen

On that long long journey
In city lights and country serene
Meadows and groves lush green
Things fall apart somehow still
In an in-scape deeply troubled
Of black days making history again
And in a triumph falls the innocent
In that Gateway of terror
Immolates the setting sun in an inferno
In my childhood abode
Earth drowns in blood

Darkness stings the days
Winter clouds hover as carrion hawks
Chills of cold devour flesh
And hearts huddle in chills of fear
Moments away from death
I broke a promise, silent though
To remind where the railroad ended for her
The mountains, skies and seas
All, of grief froze

In an abyss of loneliness then
I saw through the window pane
Of the rambling train ever
All grey and stark, bluer
Ravines steeper, ravens flying low
Their harsh cries echo
Cliffs darker, a hell of calm
Crazy bats hurtling down
All whirling past, wheels in the rut

I searched, searched
In despair deep, so deep
Have I ever rumbled her?
And far down under a roaring bridge
In a dying river, in the throes of death
I found me, me in rigor, crouched
A coward's corpse, ludicrous, afloat

No rituals--no priests,
The pyre of half burnt logs,
Sadhus in ragged saffron
Nor Vedic hymns
Reverberated the Ghats cluttered

I took with me nothing
Only her worries unlimited
A flood-tide of special thoughts
Born of a blossoming innocence
And she looking more fraught than ever
Of her country's fate
Terrorism
Taj inferno
Ghostly priests
Shared the night before
A few moments together
Worth a lifetime friendship's revelation
Until the station flag waver
Waved the last flag of my sojourn

All that I carried
A pitcher of holy water
I left behind
For I knew for certain
She my daughter
Only begotten
Would require it
One day soon
For yet another ritual
That of this country