The Crow

THE CROW

Perched atop a rusted grill

Embracing a vibrant park

Where people come to breathe and talk incessantly

Of Helios scorching the earth

And the parson’s wife

Who ran away with the blacksmith

Or the charity event

Where the governor wore a majestic purple robe

And disrobed in the shady bar

That served rum and smoky salmon

Revealing suppurating sores over body

Kissed by canines

Who now sit around a heap of bones

Thrown ever so lovingly at them

By the hands that tied their tails together

And locked jaws so that they do not bark

Yet they wince not in pain

Such is the pleasure of sucking the marrow

For in their veins

It’s not the crimson blood that flows

But the bile of sycophancy and lust

And in the shrinking bosoms

Ash ,just ash

For all the milk has dried

Perched atop the rusted grill

He waits

He watches

Dried skin of the salmon

Hangs out from his claws

He breaks the meditative trance

And bends his raven head to peck

At the shrivelled skin

As he bends the saturated night

Somewhat turns a shade of grey

The night he wears around his neck

Like the feathery cape  of Morrigan
The enigmatic diva announcing death
Or the beginning of a new phase
The banshee
Predicting it with shrieks
That rip the soul apart 

So black is the shadow of the shroud

So rich in texture

Hue and shade

So what if the dead was draped in white

Pristine,pure like a winter landscape

He thinks in silence and cocks his raven head

To mock at the whiteness of that white

‘Oh you may die a thousand lives

And live up to a million deaths

For I have blurred the line

That tells you Black from White

Go.

Sleep in tranquillity

In your crystal catacombs

You razed the forests to build these walls

The nectar in blossoms was sweet as long as you let it be’

As the bride puts kohl in eyes

And drapes her head in red

The crow

Gives a shriek

And flies away into eternity

Leaving behind the carcass that sticks on to the skeletal rails

Nothing remains

Only Truth

Thick and black as the Raven

Ghazal.17.5.12