Ancient city with a young heart Hills huddle around you Like old women at a birth Or a funeral A sullen river Receives your offerings silently You contain multitudes Your arteries are choked with cars You die a little As fumes permeate your lungs As floods surge into You die a little When they tear down your Dreaming, time worn Trains mounful whistles Tumult of traffic Cries of children at play Muezzins call for prayers The madman’s muttered obscenities Ringing of telephones Scream of pilot cars Catcalls of eveteasers Guwahati Lovers ink arms Under your- Krishnachura As red as the blood Of the scooterist Died in your street Guwahati Your Pople have no time To read the graffiti on your walls Or live out a cosmic experience At your- planetar-ium Few care to walk The corridors of your- history Or even know why A frozen god contemplates the river At Sukleswac At your birthsite At the temple of the nine planets Guwahati Every day your old self Dies a ittle The glossy tourist brochures Have for you A brand new sobriquet Only a threshold To be crossed? They have forgotten the pulsebeat Remember your past The wrinkles under your paint The river sullenly washes your side Dreaming under the sky. |