The Grief Poem by Ponniah Ganeshan

Why do I now come to grief
From where does its root thrive
My legs walked, with my dolls
Made alive
Into the days of my childhood
There was one as truth and the other as an untruth.

Still the root explores
Where to begin and where to end
I become the *mythical swine
Digging down the ground beneath
I become the mythical bird, flying into the clouds.

Oh, my little screwpine flower, you uttered
A lie to me
Did you see the radicle root lying
In a pool, made of fragile glassy ideals.
Catching it, pulling it out
Only to have a handful of a half
And in pursuance of the other half, the earth
Groaned again and again
With the grief in pain.

With my crown raising higher and higher on every peak
With my root taking down beneath
Towards the fact of existence
All words lashed out to me
Fall apart as dead leaves.

Blood oozed from lips torn
The plate of rice signed by wife
Sat on the table with no words, but
as sharpened knife,
And the glass of water, full of my tears.

What next befell then
I lay fallen in a vacuum
Made by a flight of hundreds of sparrows
At the pelt of a stone.
The dream that stopped half way, slowly revives
Looking for the root
When I fall asleep with the gently song of this poem.