Sometimes
in distant foreign lands, when
pangs of loneliness caress me with the forgotten love
and eerie solitude smothers me with gloomy affection
then I blow the dust of time
gathered on my mind’s chronicle
bearing the tag “Home Sweet Home”
and carry the excess-baggaged burden
of my recollections from the past.
I still recall our sad parting
when your tearful eyes dripped saline water
which blended with the salty waters of the seven seas
I had crossed once,
sailing with sobbing sentiments in a stone-hearted ship.
After my nimble departure
how the streets in my hometown were deserted,
and prickly cactus plants spawned from
the rose shrubs in our garden
The age old Banyan tree had shed
silent tears under its gregarious shade
wailing peacocks dance no more in our backyard
and my desolate dwelling transformed into
an abandoned hoary graveyard.
I long to kiss those burgundy lips of the blowing easterly winds
that whisper your enamourous name
while immortal memories of the whiff of
my native soil and floral landscapes,
snow-clad mountains and rusty desert sands,
lush-green forests and sun-kissed pastures,
crystal-clear streams and foam-covered beaches,
cosmos of unfettered torrents and intrepid thunderbolts
milieus of gold-dusted mornings and hue-sprinkled evenings
glittering metropolitan skyline and vivid village panoramas,
welcome me with their wide open benign arms
to come back to my sanctimonious roots.
Though I have come a long way from home
far away from your sacred lands,
very far from your perfect ambience
but it is my heart’s desire now to end my alien life’s journey in your perpetual paradise.
Hence, I will return to the emollient womb of my motherland,
where I was once born…
