It has come to this

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

Mother , I see now you are grieving.
There is no compulsion for grieving
A son lost and frozen on to an ice slab
With eyes screwed on a whirring fan.
He had just shown you and the girls
All the stars he could of the dark night.

A pain in the temple rises like the wind
Only to come down like in winnowing
As grain goes into your eyes, an oldness
Disappears in a turban of orange light

A woman of no winnowing consequence
Turns instrument of fiddling and turning
Machine power to harvest wind, to a few
Shadows playing under a giant banyan,
Vignettes of see, not all grand spectacles

At dusk the grain flies , orange sun flies
And the banyan flies, and the pain flies
As much has risen and fallen in temple