For Kamala Das

She died..I am told today

Her seed lisped out a cry

"Prayers for her..a silent something?"

What do I pray for a soul so satiated

Someone who feared to go so..

Someone so me in the me'O mine

I can but see her as a we..

The loss of someone close

The fear of loosing the presence

The stillness of it all

When the mind shrieks in silences

The soul cannot hear

For its journey from wherever to whenever has begun in earnest

The still of the body

In smiles that you see no more

In the cotton ear plugs that allow

Your cries to filter no more

In happy stillness they sit on a body that was once OURS

When death approaches in footsteps that wonder now here now there

When all at once it dawns on us that

she shall perhaps smile no more

fear no more

cry no more at the fear of shall we say 'The going'

The realisation is perhaps a relief in questions of the unknown

But would like to know from this disturbed soul of fears

was the passing a quiet?

And then the questions galore pour forth

Are you there again amidst us maybe in the hug of a woof

In the books that gather dust

In the little eyes acoss the lane that smilingly do their dance

Are you here somewhere in the presence that was ours?

Or are you gone and truly forgot, in the insence sticks I burn

Spiralling in their wafty smoke, the essence of a life all but gone?

In memories and in pages and in words that you leave for us

We find the you & you the us

For in that we are but connected

Perhaps in that umbical cord alone

You shall live a life fuller than what you thought you had

In the hyms of today, and hands folded in prayer

Let the you be rested

your essence in our minds it lingers

In the words that corpses can never be

Somewhere in this eternity called time

If the world were even to doom

the words would linger for posterity

In a hung transition called time

Like Sun, the moon and stars they assume a life of their own

Be not sad O Amma of mine

You leave not this world not its beauty galore

In urchins on the street and flowers that laugh

You remain within & within the heart.....

© 2010 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury