Vow of silence

The seer wrote:

I am on a vow of silence

For fear of telling the truth

To a world not ready for it

To tell the truth and see it distorted

Like Chinese whispers till the words

Lose all meaning and sound

Commonplace

Or ridiculed for being a charlatan

Claiming to see behind the veil 

When the seen is all that is to be seen

And death is not a beginning but an end

Or worse to be turned into god and worshipped, the message all forgotten.

Trees

The mind said 

Keep your day out

So that you may sleep

And keep day and night out

While all the memories churn

Like the sleepless sea 

And come up with dreams 

That no fiction can replicate

All the trees of my landscape

I have befriended in my exile

Learnt the names 

My ancestors gave them

Count time by their seasons

Remain their secret admirer

Exult in their spring

Grieve when they litter

Delight at the green canopy

Against the blue sky

Smile at their shadows

Lovelier than their blossoms ----

May they weather all their storms

And outlast all the temples of kings.

Do not

Do not ask children

To be soldiers

In your adult unequal wars

In your Herod-like genocide

Do not make them keep counting the seconds

Mother lasted before she was counted dead

When the father too had counted himself  dead earlier

Do not make them sleep

In the ruins of their homes

Watching the sky where there

Was ceiling and keep staring

At stars till they moved away

Unable to look at all this darkness

Do not make them write wills

Leaving their toys to children

Who too may die as children

Do not do not do not do not do all that

Then you go home and put children to bed.