Shamasis Bhattacharya

The next best thing to death is sleep, murmured the debutant:
“Believe it is true, believe it blindfolded,
Seek not the why or the wherefore.”
For the answer has wept in repentant echoes through endless eons.

Colours, viewed through the kaleidoscope of time,
Warp the soundings perceived,
Etched swiftly to gauge the depths of the mantling lake.

Out there, unsheltered, rests the placid lake,
Flowing long,
Tirelessly,
Incessantly,
Yet sleeps —
From above, as tranquil as any could be.

But little known — or little heeded —
Beneath the serene facade rages a violent storm,
A tempest swirling in the watery abyss,
That has seethed since light’s dawn;
An era before knights were known,
When days themselves were blind.

With the surge of turbulence came the dark days,
Marked by somber acceptance
And veils of doubt.
“Let there be light,” it echoed,
Unaware that
Its journey had been too long for survival.

Born aged, with hair of grey, face lined with time,
Its eyes, strangled, drowned, nearly extinguished.
On amputated limbs, it barely clings to life,
Encased in the malignant embrace of a dark fungus,
Along whelp cobwebs that entangle its feeble feet.

The dark times were not static; they morphed.
In every guise, it cloaked itself in the innocence of newborn flesh —
Growing, ever confused.
Does Sense exist?
To it, Sense was defiant;
Clung to the bottom of a damp glass,
Neither moving nor letting anyone move.

Strange, yet not beyond belief, that Sense may mislead,
(Or does it?
It knows not.
Perhaps Sense is just.
Or perhaps… not.
The scales are even,
Balanced like twins in opposition.)
It claims the dimmer light as sun, the brighter blaze as moon.
Who can say? These are but names,
Names that the universe beckons and an individual defies.

And in this morass of gloom, it continues to flow,
Unseen from without.
Yet those who plunge within feel the warmth of its turmoil,
And might drown in the turbulence’s deceptive embrace.
Death shan’t touch them,
But slumber might caress their eyes.

Wake not,
Trust in the trance’s reality.
It is belief that asserts life,
And belief alone that lulls to sleep
Until the flow ceases.
Until all eyes open to see
The lake has vanished, leaving naught but
A dark, deserted void.