🌌Life - A poem by Biswajit Basu

LIFE

I

I look up at the starry firmament

Heavenly stars dot the velvet curl of the sky,

Trillions of planets, billions  of miles away

Seemingly living forever: never to die.

II

Cast your eyes through the verdant forest

Vertical trunks support the spreading branches in everlasting rest,

In a silence broken only by the songbird

Cedar tops sway as the wind whispers through its crest.

III

Look at that lovely landscape

Undulating fields of golden corn that lean towards the gurgling stream,

Laughing at their private joke in nature's open book.

As they go along their lives as if its an unending dream.

IV

Look at the hills yonder of varying height,

Colourful toy houses cling to their basking sides,

Illuminated by the soft light  from a clouded sky

Wherefrom the sun filters through its misty light.

V

Look at the lonely cheetah poised high on a tree

And the herd of elephants in the turgid stream

Trumpeting their happiness, gambolling.

Celebrating their existence in this life, a dream.

VI

But the beauty of our world is not for all to see

My just born puppy lies forlorn and quiet on my lap,

Eyes unopened, hoping to live in a new world

Breathing softly as if in a dreamy nap.

VII

I put him in an old woollen sock and close to my chest

To keep him warm and keep him alive

I stayed awake whole night long,

And wiiled the powers that be to make him well and thrive.

VIII

But it was all in vain for he died early that morn

And I remember I cried so, for a life snuffed out for no reason at all

I realised that day that everybody lives according to his destiny,

Its duration is till you get the call.

IX

It has been written when you will be born and when your time will be up

And nothing can deter the course of your destiny

For life and death are preordained

And lives in mysterious secret within Mother Earth.

X

What remains then is the intervening time

Which we call life and is fraught with uncertainty

And what you make of it has a bit of your choice,

But is still mostly a continuous series of devious  probability.

XI

So I look back now at my own passage through the vicissitudes of life.

Happy it has been interspersed infrequently with events, sad

And I realise that my days of undulating corn fields, whispering cedars and bubbling brooks are gone 

And they will not come back again to be had.

XII

When destiny rings the bell to end my watch, like on my ship

And this world takes me back to its folds,

Some will grieve my departure but I will be beyond any worldly care

As I walk through the whispering cedars on other worlds.

-Biswajit Basu 

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