LAPSES OF YOUTH

Ask that Chikinia park if you want to know

About the lapses of my youth,

Where on the chests of rocks lie engraved

Beautiful words of my pious sin

Sparkling  like shiny souls of angels in love with God

In the scribbles of passion on the body of green sod;

Where Spring had run riot into head of a rose

Driving it crazy for a cooling fire

In search of which it multiplied into myriad dancing images

In the nearby lake’s waters pierced by a noon Sun in ire--

The  rose was pure love and ripples of lake, its singing lyre ;

And memories were lost children in the dark of a dead forest

Burning dry leaves of lost love

In  strokes of stray Summer fires,

At the touch of my Love’s ambling feet

When into smokes of the moon rose the blazing spires.

Ask the dust kissed by her feet at the park

If you care to know about the lapses of my youth--

Its fragrance will tell you about the weaving of wishes

Around the ariel roots hanging from its age old banyan

That  turned us into a Naga couple in ecstatic dance of love

To the tune of wind played by an unseen charmer from above.

@copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 09/03/15