Poems by
Parshathi S Mohan

Lingering Litanies

a poem by Parshathi S Mohan

Nesting on the branches of memories
Stretches my heart its pearlstruck wings
Into the skies of grey flushing scarlets
To retrieve those forlorn nights of screams

I remember that day, when my daughter on my lap
With her tresses of hair, caressed by my arms
With her glinting eyes pining at those gloomy clouds
Wept in the dark with the reason unknown

With drowning eyes, she looked at me
Stygian pool is the world, she said
Not a word again, not a single smile
And she called for the Chronos, the reason unknown

The very next morn, when the first birds woke
I saw her among the weeping reeds
Beset by the dancing rivulets around
Her naked arms shrouded by the clouds

Silence all around, filled with grief…
Coots and herns too cry aloud
Feared, are the falling flakes that flock.
Ashamed are the boughs, they arch down now.

Her wails like gales dashes around me
Her songs of dirge echoes in my heart
Her streams of screams make me weep
In these vales of savage tattoos.

She was a daughter and your sister too
But your eagle eyes left nothing there
Except her naked flesh among those darkest woods.
Uncared she slept there, with the reason unknown.

Her cries like wreathing snakes make me wake
Amidst those scowl nights and dreamless sleeps.
My opened eyes see her dark shut eyes.
My tintless heart calls for her beatless heart.

Sysiphus is man, climbing up the hill
Bedimmed, walking down again and again
And every morn with new eyes
Bare of heart, walks along the dales.

I count the nights to leave this asylum
To reach my child’s heavenly soul,
Sans the eyes of heartless men,
Sans the tears of a lifeless girl.

No mother must see her child
Raped and thrown in the grasses of thorns
With poisoned faint smokes dancing around her
God, let my lingering litanies come true!!!