You really
gave me wings
to quill my fatigued fancy,
and awakened my sleeping impulses
from a nocturnal slumber.
I had a wish to write
an elegy of the last man loved and lived
on this planet
and to look up at the
last crane that flew over the Ganges
and built a shrine in Benaras,
A few words,
about the lovers
died making everlasting love
keeping their eyes on each other
drinking the last cup of kiss
immortalised as an idol in the myth of Pompeii
when the mount Vesuvius broke
and the volcano wrapped the city in its shroud.
I would love to dance with Helen,
and smell her fragrance that turned troy into
heap of ashes,
Would go on an odyssey
and come back to Ithaca to see,
how Penelope waited twenty years
for her husband Ulysses’s return to home,
and how she devised a trick to pretence the suitors by
weaving and unweaving the same sweater
as upon its finishing a marriage was a compelled promise.
You gave me courage
to mourn over the death of a cow
beaten to the last breath
and chopped in a slaughter house.
I would go and interrupt
in the court of Hastinapur
where Draupadi, the daughter, the wife, the sister
is being disrobed before the demigods and Godfathers,
Wish to have a rendezvous
with Umraojaan of Awadh who was the mistress of nawabs,
but I will dare to keep my eyes on her anklets tinkling
and dancing whole night,
over the innumerable pegs of whiskey
and Ghazals of Ghalib.
I will pray the fire god
to bless me to have company of the last widow
getting her locks shaved off
treading into pyre,
to prove loyalty towards her ardhang.
Vow down to the last man
giving sermon of the Bhagavad-Gita
Dhruva Harsh: A filmmaker, storyteller and playwright, lives in Mumbai,India. He has earned D. Phil in English from the University of Allahabad.He is Editor of Asian Signature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_I_Exist:_A_Riddle
Painting by J.C