A dead man with a beating heart
Staggers towards his untold end
Lifting a foot with immense pain
Against the marshiness of time

As heavy feet drag a light head
An irresistible temptation sets in
To surrender and drown to nihility
Vaguely romanticising perpetuity
A life without the burden of a body

Recognising, he stops for a moment
To trace echoes of constant murmur
The slayer’s dramatic curtain reveal
Is no unprepared strange occurrence

Slowly he moves with acceptance
To feel the smooth texture of time
To see its elegance as it decelerates
To hear the soft whimpers of reality
To smell a familiar odour of impulse
To taste the flavour of deterioration

He inhales in a presence of mind
And exhales the dull days bygone
Just as waves of doom never ends
So does the wisdom to introspect

Gopika Pramod

Patterns in life continue to recur as echoes. Being mindful of these patterns help to come out of the pit of hopelessness.