Poetry: Sushmindarjeet Kaur

The Lamb

Stealthily memories come

Of the olden golden days;

Smelling and sniffing,

Passing through the plethora of occurrences,

Piercing, shedding and divesting the darkness everywhere,

Paving the path

To the lustrous present

Till they stop and cease.

Linger, delay and falter their journey.

 

What they perceive:

The same centuries old mind

In the new cloak,

Sans the lustre,

Sans the radiance and the beam,

That waited for a long, long time

Till it was tarnished,

Slowly diminished

With the woes and distress of the globe.

The material and the self

Hid the soul beneath the cloak.

The earthen agglomeration

Concealed the spirit.

It tried hard

Not to alienate from the Supreme,

Nor to lose the splendour,

Nor to leave the grace

And

Desired to remain beautiful ever;

Inside and outside.

But the tactics of wolves and foxes

The deceits and hypocrisies of the wicked,

Retrograded the lamb into a heartless

And a nasty being.

The disciple could not meet the Master,

The earthenware remained thirsty,

The skin became parched

And the tide of sins flew unendingly.

His showers could not wash the pile of misdeeds;

Accumulated, while going astray,

And carried the lamb

Far- far away.

***

 

Sushmindarjeet Kaur is an Associate Professor and Head, PG Department of English at G.G.N. Khalsa College, Ludhiana, Punjab. She has been teaching English literature to post-graduate students for more than twenty years and to undergraduates for the last thirty years. She is also the co-ordinator of Department of Journalism in the college. Hailing from Patiala, Punjab, India, b. 1968, she acquired her M.Phil in Anthropological Linguistics and Ph.D degree from Punjabi University, Patiala in Indian English Literature. She writes short stories and poetry.

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Setu, April 2021 :: Icebergs in the Mind: Memory, Dream and Desire