The Great Mediator
A branch, a twig that falls off a tree,
leaves that give in before the prowess of the wind,
and descend tragically;
the beholder recalls a song, hums, walks further along,
in complete apathy, and who is to blame these eyes,
perpetually glaring, gazing into the distance,
squinting onto a single letter on the page,
or a scratch on the flesh—the beholder is tied to an urgency of time;
the condition breeds neglect.
Hands have their own clauses, bind in-part with sight.
They learn to sense, and maneuver capital,
count bills, sign cheques;
then inherit judgement and prejudice from sight,
only touching that which is pristine, shimmering, pale, and divine.
It’s only seldom that the hands come to embrace a stone—
the movement is brought by repeated neglect, distance,
and systemic theft of nuance, of unforeseeable odds, of kinship,
and love, and reference of one’s standing in the field of greed and lust.
They measure time in hours, the people that graze under the sun,
and sense, and eliminate all but the last remaining conflict within themselves;
they find nature emerging from within the chest,
as if the soul willed a premature death,
and unite again with soil and sand,
but that never where it really ends…
Grains of sand were once rocks,
they’re now harboured in the fruit of plants,
luring us lower beings to feast on the fruit
and sustain its progeny, and ours
as beings subservient to trees, and plants.
Our wretched kind, curating an intellect
to further dissipate the idea of nature,
and birthing ideas of self-sabotage, and assault,
straying further away into cities
that are fenced by meter-high fences,
and bulbs that light up at night.
The peril that was set to sail, abruptly, confused,
on the trailing end of the summer day,
fares the waters differently than planned: seeking fellowship
when the ocean stretches out in all directions to the horizon,
for several days; and when amidst the process of passing the great divide,
of the cold waters from the warm,
of the scant-south, from the staunt-north;
of the different saline bodies as they come to collide,
from opposite sides, raging waves into every direction,
merging yet staying apart,
enduing sickness into every sailer that passed;
this was the barest form of nature, indifferent, grand, and unforgiving.
The city lit up, in the warmest colours of evening
before the lamps were raged.
Here was the dilemma that would become vested in man,
wherein one had to command his brethren, or the meadows, and steppes,
or step down from the fabricated pedestal,
and surrender all that he’d possessed, and all that he ought to produce
to the setting sun instead.